Filipinos Living Abroad
Up until Spain's withdrawal from the Philippines in 1953, comparatively few Filipinos emigrated from their homeland; apart from contingents of emigrants to the sugarcane fields of American Hawai'i. After the Philippines gained their independence, though, rapid population growth and the production of more graduates from higher educational institutions than could ever be employed in the Philippines created a driving force for emigration, while the rapid economic growth of Hispanophone Argentina and Venezuela created numerous employment opportunities for the Hispanophone professional graduates of the Philippines. By the end of the 1970's, more than a million Filipinos had emigrated from their homeland. The anti-Chinese pogroms of 1972 likewise caused an exodus of a quarter-million Filipino Chinese, most finding refugee in Venezuela. The Third World War devastated the Philippines, reducing population levels in 1985 to a twentieth of what they were in 1980 and utterly destroying the Filipino state and society. At first, the surviving Filipinos were too impoverished to flee; after the 1984 Japanese annexation of Luzon and the following year's establishment of the Mandate of Mindanao, Filipinos emigrated en masse.
Now, the Filipino nation is very definitely diasporic. Various national and League censuses estimate that perhaps as much as eight million people are descended from individuals who were citizens of the former Filipino Republic. Of these, more than half live in the five major countries of Filipino residence, and five million of the eight million Filipinos live outside the Philippines altogether, with only one million Filipinos living in Japanese Luzon and another two million Filipinos residing in the Mandate of Mindanao. In addition to these large communities, there are also three hundred thousand Filipino-born citizens of Spain, two hundred thousand Filipino residents in Germany, and one hundred fifty thousand Filipinos living in the East Indian Commonwealth.
Total: 2.1 million of Filipino descent in 1996
Geography: Main concentrations in Kyûshû, Taiwan, Luzon, Hawai'ian Islands
Although almost all of the Filipinos living in Japan speak either Tagalog or Ilocano as their first languages and practice Catholicism, the Filipinos of the Japanese Empire can be cleanly divided into three groups. The first group, including one million people, comprises all those Filipinos who still live on the island of Luzon. Despite a high rate of natural increase, the general impoverishment of the survivors and competition for land and other resources with Japanese-sponsored colonists has encouraged mass emigration. These emigrants are the source of the second Filipino community, numbering 1.1 million Filipinos, almost all of whom live in Taiwan and Kyûshû. There, Filipino Catholics form a large and highly distinctive community that is often subjected to official prejudice. There is also a vestigial Filipino community in the Hawai'ian islands totalling some 110 thousand people, or almost one-fifth of the total Hawai'ian population. Though the Tagalog and Spanish languages have been replaced by English, many other Filipino customs have survived.
Australia
Total: 1.0 million of Filipino descent in 1996
Geography: Main concentrations in Queensland, North Australia
Although one hundred thousand Filipinos had immigrated to Australia in the fifteen years before the Third World War, most Filipino-Australians can trace their roots to post-War refugees who either fled directly to Australia or were sent there from the East Indian Commonwealth. 90% of Filipino-Australians live in Queensland and North Australia, while only 60% have taken Australian citizenship. Despite some tensions with the dominant European majority, the shared Christianity of the Filipinos and enlightened government policy has managed to keep these tensions from becoming particularly serious.
Argentina
Total: 0.9 million of Filipino descent in 1999
Geography: Main concentration in Greater Buenos Aires
In contrast to the situation in the countries of the Pacific, almost all of the Filipinos living in Argentina can trace their ancestry to pre-War immigration. The knowledge of the Spanish language by Filipino immigrants before they actually arrived in the Philippines served to ease the integration of Filipinos into the richest and most powerful Hispanophone country in the world. Filipino-Argentines maintain some community institutions, but to the chagrin of the first generation of immigrants second-generation Filipino-Argentines are quickly assimilating into the Argentine cauldron.
Total: 0.6 million of Filipino descent in 1999
Geography: Main concentrations in the Californias, Sonora
Following the Third World War and the Mexican conquest of the United States territories to its north, the liberal Mexican government resettled Hispanophone Filipino refugees from their camps in the East Indian Commonwealth to the promising if underpopulated northwestern states of greater Mexico. More quickly than Korean-Mexicans, the Filipino immigrant communities of the California and Sonora are quickly mixing with their native-born Mexican neighbours, due to the Filipinos' knowledge of Spanish and their Catholicism.
Venezuela
Total: 0.5 million of Filipino descent in 1999
Geography: Main concentration in Greater Caracas
Although Venezuela, like Argentina, is a wealthy Hispanophone cauldron with a Filipino immigrant population that arrived before the Third World War, Filipino-Venezuelans have managed to retain a stronger collective identity than their Argentine counterparts. Partly this stems from the greater heterogeneity of the Venezuelan population, but the ethnic Chinese origin of most Filipino-Venezuelans is generally considered by observers to be the more salient factor. Although most Filipino-Venezuelans speak Spanish as their first language, the tight complex of Chinese community institutions brought to Venezuela by Filipino immigrants has managed to sustain a viable Filipino-Venezuelan culture over the past generation. Filipino-Venezuelan are upwardly mobile, known for their prominence in the professional and business worlds.