"Anti-Catholic" was largely aimed at Irish Americans? That's pretty heavy. It seems like such a general term but it was aimed mostly at one group. "Anti-Asian" is shocking to hear/read also because it's not a widely used term here in California and hopefully nowhere else. I'm Catholic and of Asian descendent. If I lived in the 1800s, my life would be incredibly unpleasant and I probably wouldn't be living in the US even though I was born here. That is a life I don't want to imagine since everything I have and know now would be false.
The part about Maria Monk's, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal (1836) was pretty interesting. Monk sounds somewhat of a crazy owman and the her demise sounds so depressing. She gets caught pickpocketing some guy and dies in jail for that crime. Sounds like the modern day crack addict, except without the crack and the addiction.
The extent of how Asians were excluded from being American is amazing. It took so much effort, power, and energy to keep them out of the US. The chapter is pretty long, and the amount of text about the Chinese Exclusion act goes on for awhile. All for the economic interest of white working men. Cheap Asian labor probably stimulated the economy very well but it wasn't enough to place them in a higher class of society. They were like the new African slaves.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Research Paper #1
The First Generation in the United States
Self-proclaimed “Manila Boy” Venancio Reyes sits in the family room of his house in San Jose, California, reminiscing about his childhood and transition into adult life in the Philippines before immigrating to the United States. His wife, Gloria Sicat, also sits in the family room waiting her turn to tell her own version of the story that eventually intertwines with his. Their stories of immigration to a new country is much more than just stories shared proudly among the family; they are accounts of active participants in history that shaped 4 generations of a family living in America today.
Reyes was born in November of 1935 in the capitol city of the Philippines, Manila. His father was a tailor and his mother was a seamstress with a side business of leasing rooms for occupants. Sicat was born in June 1937, being the third of eight children. Her parents owned a children’s garment factory. Remembering no hardship, she laughs, “there was no restriction of food”. Sicat grew up in a province near Manila called Pampanga. Pampanga is known for the Clark Air Base, which was a former U.S. air base that combined Filipino and American forces especially during World War II and later during the Vietnam War. When asked about the famed Clark Air Base, she was “only a little girl during the Japanese occupation” so she vaguely remembers any soldiers in the area. Her parents were very protective and moved the family to Manila to shelter them from the horrors of war. Reyes, on the other hand, remembers when the Japanese invaded the Manila in 1941:
According to Roland E. Dolan’s book, Philippines: A Country Study, the Japanese attacked the Philippines only hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. Like Reyes said, “Initial aerial bombardment was followed by landings of ground troops both north and south of Manila” (Dolan). General Douglas MacArthur, the designated commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific region, was under immense pressure deciding on how to protect the area even though his soldiers and artillery were destroyed. In January of 1942, Manila was declared an open city to prevent further damage upon its people and its infrastructures. The most infamous event during World War II in the Philippines is the Bataan Death March, when more than 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war were forced to march 65 miles to the capital of Bataan. Weakened by maladies, lack of food, and but mostly harsh treatment including murder by the Japanese, more than 1/8 of all the prisoners died before even arriving in the north. President of the Philippines, Manual L. Quezon, and his successor, Sergio Osmena, were exiled to the United States during the march and MacArthur was exiled to Australia. As Nolan states, “the Japanese military authorities immediately began organizing a new government structure in the Philippines,” (Nolan) in which they directed civil affairs and declared the country an independent republic, but served under Japanese rule. The goal, just like declaring Manila as an open city, was to protect the Philippine people from atrocities the Japanese could perform as demonstrated in the Nanking massacre in China at the start of World War II for Asia in 1937. Filipino resistance against Japanese forces was strong underground and within guerrilla organizations and resulted in the Japanese controlling only a small fraction of the Philippines. MacArthur’s Allied forces and President Osmena returned the Philippines in October 1944 and the combat ceased when the Japanese formally surrendered in September 1945. Reyes was almost 10 years old when he caught candy thrown to the children during “Liberation Day” from the soldiers.
In the 1950s, Reyes and Sicat attended the same high school but didn’t associate much with each other. It wasn’t until college when the two started to get to know each other. Sicat graduated from the University of the Philippines and immediately started working at a local bank as an accountant. Reyes saw Sicat at the bank and soon started sending her gifts through a pledge of his fraternity where he was facilitating the hazing at the University of the East. He claims dating in the 1950s was very innocent since he never really went out on a date with Sicat; he visited her at her house and they became close quickly. Marriage became a subject between the two relatively quickly. After 2 years of dating, Reyes and Sicat got married in February 1963 and soon gave birth to their first child. Two more children followed soon after. They lived a happy comfortable life with their family and extended families in Manila. The kids visited their grandmother every weekend and played with their cousins often. Reyes and Sicat never had the idea to immigrate, to another country until they heard of the Johnson Program.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, allowed more people, including Asians, from third world countries to enter into the U.S. because of their skills and professions rather than their countries of origin. The Civil Rights Movement in America helped to jump start immigration reform as well as voting rights and civil rights. It was monumental that Asians were allowed to migrate since the U.S. had previously tried to define who was “American” with legislature like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which banned Chinese immigration for 10 years; the National Origins Act of 1924 which limited the number of immigrants from each country; and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 which excluded certain ethnic groups from immigrating, specifically those from communist influence.
Reyes and Sicat immigrated under Preference 3 for professionals and skilled individuals. They each filled out an application with their personal information including their names, spouses, children, college degrees, and so on. Documents such as university transcripts were attached and sent also. During that time, Sicat was working as an accountant and Reyes was working for an American business in the Philippines. After one month after paying an application fee, they received approval for immigration and then received their visas soon after for themselves and their three children. Before departing, each family member underwent medical examinations and X-Rays. Sicat remembers the journey to the United States: “Because of the uncertainty of not having a job and lodging, I left the Philippines first in August of 1968. At the port of entry in Honolulu, I was handed my green card by the Immigration.” She chose San Francisco because they knew of a distant relative living there. After one week of arrival, Sicat started at Pacific Bell in the accounting department so Reyes soon followed. Other than the complications of establishing their life in America, the trip itself to the U.S. was relatively easy since they both traversed by airplane. After he found a job with Caterpillar Tractor in San Leandro, they bought their first house and their kids came to the U.S. with their uncle in March 1969. A fourth child joined the family in 1969 also. With 5 years of residency, they all became United States citizens in 1973. In 1978, the family moved to San Jose since Sicat began working as an accountant for Santa Clara University and Reyes started work with Delta Airlines in the ground operations department at the San Jose airport.
Assimilating into American culture was easy for the Reyes-Sicat family. All of them already spoke English and most people treated them well. To this day, their eldest child, my mother who is turning 49 years old this year, doesn’t believe racism exists perhaps because people have never treated her differently and/or because she doesn’t notice. Most of the history between the United States and the Philippines has been incredibly peaceful, but when the first wave of Filipino laborers were brought to the Hawaii in the early 20th century, when it was still an United States annex, American laborers as well as other immigrant Asian workers discriminated against the Filipinos. In Ronald Tataki’s book, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, he discusses the discrimination Filipinos faced because they were close competitors to other groups in cheap labor. Their experiences in these early times are very reminiscent of black prejudice in the south without the extreme level of violence.
Their strong Catholic faith must be a large contributor to assimilating. All of us, at one point or another, have gone to private Catholic schools. In our family, knowing the Catholic religion is highly important. The Spaniards ruled the Philippines for 356 years after Ferdinand Magellan claimed the islands in 1521, which were named “the Philippines” in honor of King Philip II. The Spanish culture became synonymous with Filipino culture over time, with a high emphasis on Catholic religion. It is one of many cultural strongholds that have remained since Spanish rule, which ended in 1935 and then granted complete independence as a commonwealth state by 1946 with the help of American influence. Maybe the American annexation of the Philippines was another factor that allowed Filipinos to assimilate easily because of American influence to learn English.
So finally, why the United States? Sicat answers, “Because the [Johnson] Program was open, it was a nice opportunity, a good opportunity for us to try our luck… so far it [has] worked”. Reyes gives an answer that is a bit more in depth, “It’s truly a big opportunity. I would say a golden opportunity for Filipinos, not only Filipinos, but for some other countries [too]. It’s a dream, living in America, getting the opportunity. If you’re ambitious and you have a goal, this is where you can make it, as long as you work hard. But it’s also [about] tools, if you have a college degree, that’s your passport to success.”
For them, there was no large push to leave the Philippines, but the pull to America along with the means of the Johnson Program really attracted them. Both Reyes and Sicat believe in the American dream, believe they’ve lived through it, and have absolutely no regrets. It’s everything they have expected it to be as “the land of opportunity”.
Works Cited
• Alvarez, Arnold. "Philippine History | Filipino History." Philippine History | Filipino History. Arnold Alvarez, 23 Jan. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
• Dolan, Ronald E. Philippines: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1993. Philippines. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
• "First Generation in America." Interview by Tiffanie K. Lee. San Jose, CA.
• Love-Andrews, Devin. "Immigration Act of 1965." Immigration Act: 1965. David W. Koeller, 11 Sept. 2003. Web. 12 Oct. 2012..
• Takaki, Ronald T. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. Print.
Self-proclaimed “Manila Boy” Venancio Reyes sits in the family room of his house in San Jose, California, reminiscing about his childhood and transition into adult life in the Philippines before immigrating to the United States. His wife, Gloria Sicat, also sits in the family room waiting her turn to tell her own version of the story that eventually intertwines with his. Their stories of immigration to a new country is much more than just stories shared proudly among the family; they are accounts of active participants in history that shaped 4 generations of a family living in America today.
Reyes was born in November of 1935 in the capitol city of the Philippines, Manila. His father was a tailor and his mother was a seamstress with a side business of leasing rooms for occupants. Sicat was born in June 1937, being the third of eight children. Her parents owned a children’s garment factory. Remembering no hardship, she laughs, “there was no restriction of food”. Sicat grew up in a province near Manila called Pampanga. Pampanga is known for the Clark Air Base, which was a former U.S. air base that combined Filipino and American forces especially during World War II and later during the Vietnam War. When asked about the famed Clark Air Base, she was “only a little girl during the Japanese occupation” so she vaguely remembers any soldiers in the area. Her parents were very protective and moved the family to Manila to shelter them from the horrors of war. Reyes, on the other hand, remembers when the Japanese invaded the Manila in 1941:
I was in grade one; my dad picked me up from school and I saw the Japanese soldiers already marching on the ground and the Japanese airplanes flying in the sky at the same time. So, the president of the Philippines declared no contest – open city – they couldn’t repulse the Japanese invasion although we had American soldiers [and] the Philippine army… it wasn’t enough.
According to Roland E. Dolan’s book, Philippines: A Country Study, the Japanese attacked the Philippines only hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941. Like Reyes said, “Initial aerial bombardment was followed by landings of ground troops both north and south of Manila” (Dolan). General Douglas MacArthur, the designated commander of the United States Armed Forces in the Asia-Pacific region, was under immense pressure deciding on how to protect the area even though his soldiers and artillery were destroyed. In January of 1942, Manila was declared an open city to prevent further damage upon its people and its infrastructures. The most infamous event during World War II in the Philippines is the Bataan Death March, when more than 80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war were forced to march 65 miles to the capital of Bataan. Weakened by maladies, lack of food, and but mostly harsh treatment including murder by the Japanese, more than 1/8 of all the prisoners died before even arriving in the north. President of the Philippines, Manual L. Quezon, and his successor, Sergio Osmena, were exiled to the United States during the march and MacArthur was exiled to Australia. As Nolan states, “the Japanese military authorities immediately began organizing a new government structure in the Philippines,” (Nolan) in which they directed civil affairs and declared the country an independent republic, but served under Japanese rule. The goal, just like declaring Manila as an open city, was to protect the Philippine people from atrocities the Japanese could perform as demonstrated in the Nanking massacre in China at the start of World War II for Asia in 1937. Filipino resistance against Japanese forces was strong underground and within guerrilla organizations and resulted in the Japanese controlling only a small fraction of the Philippines. MacArthur’s Allied forces and President Osmena returned the Philippines in October 1944 and the combat ceased when the Japanese formally surrendered in September 1945. Reyes was almost 10 years old when he caught candy thrown to the children during “Liberation Day” from the soldiers.
In the 1950s, Reyes and Sicat attended the same high school but didn’t associate much with each other. It wasn’t until college when the two started to get to know each other. Sicat graduated from the University of the Philippines and immediately started working at a local bank as an accountant. Reyes saw Sicat at the bank and soon started sending her gifts through a pledge of his fraternity where he was facilitating the hazing at the University of the East. He claims dating in the 1950s was very innocent since he never really went out on a date with Sicat; he visited her at her house and they became close quickly. Marriage became a subject between the two relatively quickly. After 2 years of dating, Reyes and Sicat got married in February 1963 and soon gave birth to their first child. Two more children followed soon after. They lived a happy comfortable life with their family and extended families in Manila. The kids visited their grandmother every weekend and played with their cousins often. Reyes and Sicat never had the idea to immigrate, to another country until they heard of the Johnson Program.
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Immigration Act of 1965, also known as the Hart-Cellar Act, allowed more people, including Asians, from third world countries to enter into the U.S. because of their skills and professions rather than their countries of origin. The Civil Rights Movement in America helped to jump start immigration reform as well as voting rights and civil rights. It was monumental that Asians were allowed to migrate since the U.S. had previously tried to define who was “American” with legislature like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 which banned Chinese immigration for 10 years; the National Origins Act of 1924 which limited the number of immigrants from each country; and the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952 which excluded certain ethnic groups from immigrating, specifically those from communist influence.
Reyes and Sicat immigrated under Preference 3 for professionals and skilled individuals. They each filled out an application with their personal information including their names, spouses, children, college degrees, and so on. Documents such as university transcripts were attached and sent also. During that time, Sicat was working as an accountant and Reyes was working for an American business in the Philippines. After one month after paying an application fee, they received approval for immigration and then received their visas soon after for themselves and their three children. Before departing, each family member underwent medical examinations and X-Rays. Sicat remembers the journey to the United States: “Because of the uncertainty of not having a job and lodging, I left the Philippines first in August of 1968. At the port of entry in Honolulu, I was handed my green card by the Immigration.” She chose San Francisco because they knew of a distant relative living there. After one week of arrival, Sicat started at Pacific Bell in the accounting department so Reyes soon followed. Other than the complications of establishing their life in America, the trip itself to the U.S. was relatively easy since they both traversed by airplane. After he found a job with Caterpillar Tractor in San Leandro, they bought their first house and their kids came to the U.S. with their uncle in March 1969. A fourth child joined the family in 1969 also. With 5 years of residency, they all became United States citizens in 1973. In 1978, the family moved to San Jose since Sicat began working as an accountant for Santa Clara University and Reyes started work with Delta Airlines in the ground operations department at the San Jose airport.
Assimilating into American culture was easy for the Reyes-Sicat family. All of them already spoke English and most people treated them well. To this day, their eldest child, my mother who is turning 49 years old this year, doesn’t believe racism exists perhaps because people have never treated her differently and/or because she doesn’t notice. Most of the history between the United States and the Philippines has been incredibly peaceful, but when the first wave of Filipino laborers were brought to the Hawaii in the early 20th century, when it was still an United States annex, American laborers as well as other immigrant Asian workers discriminated against the Filipinos. In Ronald Tataki’s book, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans, he discusses the discrimination Filipinos faced because they were close competitors to other groups in cheap labor. Their experiences in these early times are very reminiscent of black prejudice in the south without the extreme level of violence.
Their strong Catholic faith must be a large contributor to assimilating. All of us, at one point or another, have gone to private Catholic schools. In our family, knowing the Catholic religion is highly important. The Spaniards ruled the Philippines for 356 years after Ferdinand Magellan claimed the islands in 1521, which were named “the Philippines” in honor of King Philip II. The Spanish culture became synonymous with Filipino culture over time, with a high emphasis on Catholic religion. It is one of many cultural strongholds that have remained since Spanish rule, which ended in 1935 and then granted complete independence as a commonwealth state by 1946 with the help of American influence. Maybe the American annexation of the Philippines was another factor that allowed Filipinos to assimilate easily because of American influence to learn English.
So finally, why the United States? Sicat answers, “Because the [Johnson] Program was open, it was a nice opportunity, a good opportunity for us to try our luck… so far it [has] worked”. Reyes gives an answer that is a bit more in depth, “It’s truly a big opportunity. I would say a golden opportunity for Filipinos, not only Filipinos, but for some other countries [too]. It’s a dream, living in America, getting the opportunity. If you’re ambitious and you have a goal, this is where you can make it, as long as you work hard. But it’s also [about] tools, if you have a college degree, that’s your passport to success.”
For them, there was no large push to leave the Philippines, but the pull to America along with the means of the Johnson Program really attracted them. Both Reyes and Sicat believe in the American dream, believe they’ve lived through it, and have absolutely no regrets. It’s everything they have expected it to be as “the land of opportunity”.
Works Cited
• Alvarez, Arnold. "Philippine History | Filipino History." Philippine History | Filipino History. Arnold Alvarez, 23 Jan. 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
• Dolan, Ronald E. Philippines: A Country Study. Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, 1993. Philippines. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
• "First Generation in America." Interview by Tiffanie K. Lee. San Jose, CA.
• Love-Andrews, Devin. "Immigration Act of 1965." Immigration Act: 1965. David W. Koeller, 11 Sept. 2003. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
• Takaki, Ronald T. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans. Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. Print.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Chapter 6: Pioneers of the Century of Immigration
Since this is the chapter I will be reporting on for class, I simply took notes:
Patterns and sources of immigration changed with time and situations. From 1820-1924, about 36,000,000 people migrated to the United States. I wonder if this includes all ethnicities or just those from Europe.
Irish:
Patterns and sources of immigration changed with time and situations. From 1820-1924, about 36,000,000 people migrated to the United States. I wonder if this includes all ethnicities or just those from Europe.
Irish:
-
mostly came to US because of potato famine
- Prefamine Migration (until 1844) - Mainly male catholics migrated to large US cities and used in public works since they were largely unskilled labor
- The Famine Years (1860-1930) - Ireland's agriculture decreased incredibly since farming the potato was very unstable and in result, epidemic broke out. The immigrants that came were unskilled labor, competing with blacks for laboring and serving jobs.
- The Irish Immigration (1860-1930) - New immigrants settled in neighborhoods where there were already Irish settlers. Most immigrants were now single females. Now Irish had an array of jobs in public service, laundry, and so on.
- No major religion (Protestant, Catholic, Jewish)
- Spread settlements across United States, but in family groups
- Lived within German neighborhoods
- Took skilled jobs (beer industry, bakers, tailors, etc)
- Didn't assimilate well with language; still relied on German until WWI
- People from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
- Settled in rural areas in Midwest
- Swedes: Farming immigrants from middle class family groups that came because of economic factors and overpopulation in Sweden. Often associated with Republican party in support of Prohibition(banishment of alcohol).
- Norwegians: Farming immigrants that settled in rural areas because of lack of agriculture space in Norway. Some settled in Brooklyn. Also Republican.
- Danes: Most information is from police records and smallest group of immigrant Scandinavians. Police records contained: year/month of departure, sex, traveling alone or in a group, occupation, age, last place of residence, and destination. Since the largest group of Danes were Mormons in Salt Lake City, they migrated in family groups, however many who came were unmarried men and women and would marry outside of their ethnicity. Women benefitted from the lack of women in the work force when looking for jobs. Most came for economic reasons and settled in the Midwest.
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