class 10 respond

The cultures and heritage of Mexican Americans and that of Filipino Americans is quite similar in one way or another. The reason behind this is because the two countries were both colonies of Spain, “Spain established colonial control over the people of Philippines in the sixteenth century” (Min, p. 180). Actually, an interesting fact is that the Philippines was colonized by Spain for many years than Mexico, for 333 years from 1521 to 1898. As such, these Filipino Americans and most other Spanish-speaking communities such as Mexican Americans share several aspects including language, food, religion and family togetherness. To some extent, this has contributed to the less recognition and misperceptions of most people that the Filipino Americans are not part of the Asian American community due to their social context and cultural alignment to Latin Americans. 

A similarity that Filipino Americans have with the other Asian immigrants is that most of the early immigrants settled in the U.S as agricultural laborers. Even though there were other Filipinos who came as Pensionados under the sponsorship of the U.S government, most of the early Filipinos who immigrated to the U.S came in search of better opportunities and ended up working in plantations in Hawaii and California. “Two categories of Filipinos arrived during the first wave: students and laborers” (Lee, p. 146). One difference that they have from other Asian immigrantsis that they had a familiarity and knowledge of American culture and the American people before coming to the U.S. Since the U.S also colonized Philippines after it had been handed over by Spain, it had imposed its rule according to American concepts. As such, the Filipinos were aware of the American culture before immigrating to the U.S unlike other Asian immigrants.

References

Min, Pyong Gap. Asian Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues. 2nd ed. SAGE Publications, Inc, 2005.

Lee, Jonathan H. X. History of Asian Americans. 1st ed., Santa Barbara, California, Greenwood, 2015.