Seattle's Filipino Editors Draw a Line: Restrict Us If You Must — But Never Shut Us Out
As agitation builds in Congress to bar Filipinos from the mainland, the editors of Seattle's Filipino Forum weigh the Johnson bill and conclude that a quota, however bitter, is preferable to outright exclusion — which they call an imperialist injustice.
LIMITATION OR EXCLUSION?
Anent the recent agitation to exclude Filipinos from the United States, a lengthy article from Victor E. Nazareth appears elsewhere in this issue, in which the writer expresses his favoring the limitation or restriction of Filipinos coming to this country. Representative Johnson's bill, however, seems to do with the complete exclusion of Filipinos from this country. There finally evolved the question as to which would be the Filipinos' preference: to be excluded or to be restricted.
To exclude the Filipinos from this country would necessitate such amendments to the colonial administration in the Philippines as would affect self-government for Filipinos. This direction will never meet with the approval of the American people — at least for the present.
To limit the coming of Filipinos is a different scheme. If carried with the best of intentions it would bring decided advantages to the Filipinos. It would solve the labor problem in the Pacific Northwest both for the good of white labor and Filipino labor as well. It would tend to turn the attention of Filipino laborers to the vast natural resources of the Philippines, almost untouched, in the southern part of the archipelago. It would bring out a situation whereby only the fittest will be encouraged to come over.
To limit the coming of Filipinos means a road to their welfare. To exclude them entirely and absolutely from this country points to an imperialistic move on the part of the United States. It would mean injustice and unfairness.
Limit or restrict the coming of the Filipinos, but never exclude them, unless their national and political status are changed.
“Limit or restrict the coming of the Filipinos, but never exclude them, unless their national and political status are changed.”
The Forum's argument lost: the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934 reclassified Filipinos as aliens and cut immigration to fifty persons a year, setting up the Pinoy labor migrations and family separations that followed. The paper's reasoning — that restriction is survivable but exclusion is an insult — anticipates a century of American debates over who gets a quota and who gets a wall. It also reminds us that Seattle's Chinatown–International District was, a hundred years ago, a place where a community argued for its own future in print.
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