Why Are There So Many Filipino Nurses In The U.S.? | AJ+

immigrants we get the job done or so the song goes so we all know that when it comes to labor the United States loves immigrants and one of the most unique stories of American immigration and labor actually comes from the Philippines in particular it's the story of Filipino women who became nurses throughout the country's hospitals hey guys I'm sana this is AJ plus and this Sunday I want to talk a bit about why there are so many Filipino nurses in the United States and what that says about the history of Filipino Americans and Filipino labor okay so you might be saying so now the u.s. has a lot of Filipino nurses yep here's what's up back into other 15 a foreign-born filipinos made up the fourth largest group of immigrants in the country and the majority of Filipinos are in California where they make up 20% of the nursing force which is impressive when you consider that they only make up about 4% of the state's population now it's easy to think of the Philippines as all the way over there and the United States right over here but dr. Katherine sneeze a joy who wrote the book Empire of Care says that imagining Filipinos as simply foreigners actually erases a history between the countries Filipinos and Tiffany certain groups of Filipino immigrant workers like in the grand nurses are not foreigners and the way we tend to think that foreigners they actually have historical interactions with American and that interaction begins like so many other immigrant interactions with colonization the Spanish colonized and ruled the archipelago we now call the Republic of the Philippines for a few centuries in 1898 the Americans and the Spanish went to war and it ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris as a result the Americans got a lot of territories from the Spanish one of which was the Philippines but the people of the islands didn't welcome the Americans they wanted their independence not more colonizers that resistance led to the three-year long Philippines American War from 1899 to 1902 and it was fought between US forces and Filipino nationalists and it was a brutal war for Filipinos it killed 20,000 combatants and two hundred thousand civilians as a result of the violence diseases like cholera and malaria and even famine when the war ended the Philippines came under the colonial control of the United States and that's when the story of the Filipino nurses begins like in its other colonies the United States began the Americanization of the islands after setting up a government in the Philippines you also had American colonial officials going to the Philippines and exposing Filipinos to American culture to the English language to Americanized education and this kind of training influenced so many different groups of Filipinos to dream about the US and to desire to migrate their American health workers in the Philippines needed locals to deal with the health issues of Filipinos because malaria and cholera had killed so many during the war but they didn't find any nurses trained the way the Americans had been trained and so they began recruiting Filipino women to work as what were called volunteer auxiliary and contract nurses around the same time in 1903 President William Taft passed a law that allowed and funded certain Filipino students to study in American colleges and this led to the first wave of Filipino nurses coming to the United States and it also led to a lot of the nurses staying they even established their presence with organizations like the Philippine Nurses Association of New York and the waves of Filipino nurse migration continued throughout the 20th century especially as the United States opened up its borders a bit more during World War two more Filipino nurses were trained to serve in the US military and during the same time the Philippines came under Japanese occupation after the war ended the United States granted the territory independence in 1946 and two years later the State Department introduced the exchange visitor program a little something created to push back against Soviet influence you know bring more people into the United States and show them what the capitalist good life is actually all about because of the decades-long colonial relationship and education and English language the Philippines became a model country for the program and the nurses led the way the program was so successful that it actually encouraged more Filipinos to go into nursing the number of nurses in the Philippines jumped over 700 percent from 7,000 in 1948 to over 57,000 in 1953 the program also encouraged building of more nursing schools in the Philippines back in 1940 there were only 10 and today 429 that program in addition to the 1965 Immigration Act opened up the borders even more for educated Filipinos and so by 1973 we end up seeing over 12,000 Filipino nurses immigrated to the United States but I gotta mention this it wasn't just because of American immigration policies that so many Filipinos were migrating to the u.s. in the 1970s with President Ferdinand Marcos who ruled under martial law a policy of labor export was introduced the whole idea behind the export of labor was that Filipinos would travel abroad on war contracts make money send it back home and thus help a struggling economy the government even created an agency that directly provided migrant labour to foreign governments and companies that policy pretty much made the Philippines one of the top exporters of labor I mean check this about 10% of all Filipinos are foreign workers that's around 10 million people in around 170 different countries and did the policy of exporting labor actually worked for the economy well for decades the Philippines has been one of the top five recipients of money transfers for migrant labor shoutout to Western Union not sponsored take for instance how in 2015 over three million Filipinos left the country to work abroad they sent back twenty-eight point five billion dollars which made up about a tenth of the Philippines total GDP so exported labor is a big deal for the Philippines and it really does get to the heart of the Filipino immigrant experience whether in a country like Saudi Arabia or in the United States and it's equally important to note that despite the so-called success of the export of Filipino labor it's come with a lot of sacrifice struggle and vulnerability take for example Filipino nurses here in the United States who are professionals but still face discrimination the vulnerability of being immigrant nurses can also be connected to being exploited by being assigned sometimes the most undesirable kinds of work on the nursing floor or being assigned on the most undesirable ship unfortunately they are not the kind of challenges we think about in the United States that these women would have because they are professional immigrant workers but even though exported or imported labor is central to Filipino migration especially to the United States that's not the only part of the Filipino immigrant experience in the United States Filipinos both citizens and immigrants have used their experiences to fight for workers rights in fact one of the biggest labor movements in the United States was sparked by Filipino laborers in 1965 Filipino grape farm workers in Delano California went on strike against poor working conditions and low wages farm workers across the country joined in on the strike which eventually led to an international boycott of grapes the five-year strike ended with a major win for the farmworkers they got union contracts that protected them so Filipinos immigrants and citizens have been and remained a central part of the US as social fabric they've not only provided labor in industries that needed it the most but at times have also protected it so we just covered Filipino nurses in the United States and we've also talked in the past about Indian Americans in the motel industry what are some other communities immigrant communities that you want us to cover let us know in the comments and don't forget to like share and subscribe and come back next Sunday when we come at you with another great video

Channel: AJ+

Views: 698,229

Keywords: filipinos in the u.s., filipino americans, phillippines, philippines, filipino nurses, the philippines, filipino migration, filipino immigrants, duterte, war in the philippines, filipinos, aj+ explains, sana saeed, labor movement, filipino labor, farm workers strike, unions filipinos, news, aj+, ajplus, al jazeera

Id: egmfTZRuqzA

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 29 2017