In 1898, the United States defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War and the Philippines became a US territory, and the US began to recruit Filipinos into the US Navy (Claudio-Perez; Filipino). Between 1903 and 1934, 500,000 Filipino students came to the US to study in American schools - this was considered the First Wave of Filipino immigration. A heavy concentration of immigrants in this time went to California and Hawaii. Hawaii recruited Filipinos to work in the sugar plantations and 50,000 bachelor Filipinos arrived in San Francisco and Seattle to be employed as agricultural workers. By 1930, there were roughly 25,000 Filipinos in the US navy. In 1934, the US made the Philippines a commonwealth and limited immigration to the US to 50 Filipinos a year. In 1935, it passed the Repatriation Act which encouraged Filipinos to return to the Philippines. During the US engagement in World War II, there was fighting in the Philippines and many Filipinas became war brides, coming to the US with their husbands.
The Second Wave of Filipino immigration took place between 1945 and 1965, when Congress passed the War Brides Act which allowed Filipino servicemen from World War II American units and their dependents to migrate to the United States (Claudio-Perez). The Philippines became an independent nation in 1946, and immigration to the US was increased to 100 people per year. The US navy stopped recruiting Filipinos at that time because they were no longer US nationals. In 1947, the US and the Philippines negotiated an agreement whereby the US could recruit Filipino citizens and they were granted US citizenship after serving for a number of years.
In 1965 the Federal Immigration and Naturalization Act increased the Filipino quota to 20,000 per year, beginning the Third Wave of Filipino immigration (Claudio-Peres). An amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1986 allowed thousands of Filipinos living here illegally to gain citizen...