Filipino farmworkers harvest crops circa 1930s–1940s. Their labor was vital to the agricultural boom, yet their contributions were often overlooked in mainstream histories. – Photo from Bulosan.org
A reflection on a 1935 law that sought to erase Filipinos from America’s landscape, and what it reveals about belonging, identity, and the unfinished work of justice.
Filipino American History Month is often celebrated through food, music, and stories of migration and triumph. But history is not only about victories. It is also about the struggles that shaped our community’s path in America. One such struggle is tied to a little-known law, the Repatriation Act of 1935, which reveals how fragile Filipino lives once were in the eyes of the United States.
When the Philippines was reclassified as a Commonwealth under the Tydings–McDuffie Act, Filipinos in the U.S. suddenly became aliens overnight. Migration from the islands was cut to a trickle, with only fifty individuals allowed each year. Yet Filipinos still could not become U.S. citizens. They were in limbo, needed in the fields and canneries, yet unwanted in the social fabric of American life.
The Repatriation Act of 1935 offered “free” one-way passage for Filipinos who wished to return to the islands. But it came with a catch: once you have left, you have lost the right to come back. In effect, it was an invitation to disappear quietly from the American landscape during a time of economic depression and rising racial hostility.
Only about 2,000 Filipinos accepted the offer out of an estimated 45,000 to 50,000 then living in the United States. Many were Sakadas or Manongs, young single men recruited for low-wage agricultural work who faced harsh labor conditions and racial exclusion. The vast majority chose to endure hardship rather than give up their chance to build lives here. Their determination became the foundation of Filipino communities in Stockton, Los Angeles, Seattle, and beyond — communities that still flourish today.
Though the law was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1940, the scars remained. Families were separated, opportunities lost, and the idea of Filipino “disposability” was written into law.
The 1935 Repatriation Act did not stand alone. It was part of a longer arc of exclusion and eventual recognition that defined Filipino migration to the United States.
From exclusion to recognition, Filipino migration in America followed a long struggle through shifting laws and attitudes. It began with the Tydings–McDuffie Act of 1934, which reclassified Filipinos as aliens and capped annual immigration at fifty. A year later came the Repatriation Act of 1935, offering free passage back to the Philippines but stripping returnees of the right to re-enter. The U.S. Supreme Court struck the law down in 1940, yet its effects lingered. During World War II, more than 250,000 Filipinos served under the U.S. flag, only to see the Rescission Acts of 1946 revoke their promised veterans’ benefits.
It was not until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that the structural barriers of exclusion began to fall, allowing new generations of Filipinos to enter universities, professions, and public life on equal terms. Decades later, the veterans equity movement of the 1990s through 2010s brought partial recognition long after many had already passed away.
Filipino American history’s continuing chapter
Marking Filipino American History Month means remembering not only the parades and celebrations but also the injustices. The Repatriation Act reminds us that Filipino Americans fought not just for visibility but for the right to stay. It also teaches us that exclusion can come dressed in the language of choice.
Nearly a century later, we live in a different America – one where Filipinos are doctors, nurses, teachers, entrepreneurs, artists, public servants, and military officers. We have built homes, raised families, and contributed to every facet of American life. But the lesson of 1935 remains. Our place here was not given; it was earned through sacrifice and courage.
Many modern-day Filipinos proudly say that everything they have achieved is the result of their own merit. That is true to a point, but also incomplete. The opportunities we enjoy today exist because barriers once written into law were dismantled, laws that denied Filipinos equal access, movement, and recognition.
Before those barriers fell, Filipinos faced prohibitions not only on citizenship but on marriage and mobility. In several states, including California, Washington, and Nevada, Filipinos were barred from marrying white partners and sometimes had to travel to neighboring states where such marriages were legal. The Perez v. Sharp (1948) decision in California overturned that ban nearly two decades before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Loving v. Virginia (1967) ruling, which made interracial marriage legal nationwide. Without these rulings, many Filipino American families and lineages, including those formed through Filipino-white marriages in the postwar years, would never have been legally recognized.
Without these reforms, many of the freedoms and opportunities Filipino Americans enjoy today would have remained out of reach. Our appreciation deepens when we remember that what feels ordinary now – citizenship, mobility, marriage, equality before the law was once impossible.
In an era when immigration and belonging are again debated, the Repatriation Act stands as a warning from history. It asks whether a society can truly be just when belonging depends on convenience, and whether compassion can endure when fear dictates policy.
To those who now call America home, this story is both mirror and measure. It reminds us to cherish the rights and freedoms that earlier generations fought to secure, to defend the dignity of those still seeking a place at the table, and to never take for granted the doors that were once closed to our ancestors.
