in matters of this kind, it is the feelings of the other side that should be given greater consideration in solving a question of so delicate a nature. Mutual friendship is based not so much upon one's views as it is upon the effect of those views on the feelings of the other party concerned. If the feelings of the Filipinos are not respected and this bill is passed, the atmosphere of mutual respect that has guided the relations of both countries since the Philippines came under the United States will be difficult to maintain. For respect can not easily be continued where one side feels the sting of an offense, real or fancied. Mutual cooperation will also be greatly affected. Because of the atmosphere of mutual friendship and mutual respect, now obtaining in the islands, progress in the Philippines has been as good as it can be possible, even under the present uncertain political status of the Philippines. It is obvious that the situation will be worse than it is to-day, in so far as general progress is concerned, if this resolution became a law. II. The economic objections fall into two classes: (a) To regard as a really serious menace the presence of Filipinos in the Uuited States who are now returning to their country of their own accord. (b) To lose commerce thereby increase unemployment, and to spread a spirit of distrust of America throughout the Orient. (A) TO REGARD AS A REALLY SERIOUS MENACE THE PRESENCE OF FILIPINOS IN THE UNITED STATES WHO ARE NOW RETURNING TO THEIR COUNTRY OF THEIR OWN ACCORD The Filipinos in the United States are not as seriously the menace that they are represented to be by the proponents of this measure. Even if they were, we have taken the responsibility of guardianship over them and we should live up to that responsibility or else we must, in honor, turn them loose. of It was asserted during the hearings that the Filipinos are a social, health, and economic menace in the United States. As to being a social problem, it must in fairness be stated that the Filipinos are no more a menace to the community in which they live than any group people in any community under similar circumstances. There are about 55,723 Filipinos in the United States, and it is to their credit rather than to their dishonor that the official records show only seven convictions in the State of California for sexual offenses. The Filipinos in this country have not created a problem similar to that which our own countrymen created in the Philippines where to-day, according to the records of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, there are actually 18,000 children of American fathers, born mostly out of wedlock and who have been abandoned by their fathers, and have become a public charge necessitating the organization of an association known as the American Guardian Association to take care of them, and an appeal from Governor-General Wood to the American people for its support. The Y. W. C. A. of the United States makes a periodic survey of the conditions of immigrants to the United States, including the Filipinos, and it is pertinent in this connection to quote the statement made by Mrs. Harry M. Bremer, executive official of the 39719-31- -3 national department of immigration and foreign communities, National Board of Young Women's Christian Associations of the United States, when she testified before the Senate Committee on Immigration, December 15, 1930, with reference to moral conditions resulting from the introduction of a large number of Filipinos into southern California. She said that the Filipinos "are not worse than other miscellaneous colonies of homeless single men. Brig. Gen. F. LeJ. Parker, Chief of the Bureau of Insular Affairs, who saw service in the Philippines for a number of years, in his testimony before the same committee, paid a high tribute to the moral character of the Filipino. He said: I lived in the Philippines for a number of years and in all the years I lived there I never heard of a white woman being insulted or annoyed by Filipinos; and I lived in very remote localities as well as in the city of Manila. The late Gen. Leonard Wood in his annual report to the Secretary of War for the year 1922, said: Life and property have been reasonably secure and travelers have gone unmolested without arms or escort wherever they cared to go. Parties of women unescorted and unattended have traversed the most remote portions of the mountain province without suffering any discourtesy or annoyance. As to the charge that Filipinos constitute a health menace, it is only necessary to quote here the official statement of Dr. George E. Ebright, president of the Board of Health of the State of California, made before the Commonwealth Club of California and published in the printed report of that organization on Filipino immigration (vol. 5, No. 45, November 5, 1929): "The Filipino is not a publichealth menace and is not verv much of a public-health problem." Regarding the criminal records of the Filipinos in California, the chairman of the subcommittee of the Commonwealth Club of California, who, in conjunction with State officials, made a study of this phase of the Filipino problem in that State submitted the following data: With these official figures as the basis, he arrived at the following conclusion: The figures at hand would indicate that the Filipino is no better than other races as to his criminal record. On the other hand, direct statistics are not available to definitely show that he is much worse. It will thus be seen from the foregoing that Filipinos in the United States, even in the States where they have congregated in largest numbers, are not the social or the moral and the health menace that the proponents of this resolution claim them to be. Proponents of this measure assert that the Filipinos now in the United States present a serious problem on the Pacific coast, particularly in California. This is the main reason for the agitation against the further coming of Filipinos to the United States. The situation, however, is solving itself; there is no necessity of enacting this proposed legislation. The Filipino workers in Monterey, San Joaquin, Salinas, and Imperial Valleys of California and in other farms on the West coast where lettuce, celery, asparagus, cauliflower, beet, etc., are grown, are not competing with American laborers because the work that the Filipinos do in these farms, called "stoop work," is a kind which the Americans do not care and even refuse to do. A very large number of the Filipinos in California are employed in this noncompetitive Occupation. Where competition exists is in the cities where Filipinos are able to secure work in the places where they are not barred from employment, such as domestic help of all kinds, and other unskilled employments. Replacement by Filipinos of Americans in these kinds of work, however, will not become any more serious than it is at present as may be gathered from the following facts: Many of the Filipinos that have landed in the ports of California, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, came from Hawaii by way of various steamship lines. On December 5, 1930, the Dollar Line discontinued its steerage service from Honolulu to San Francisco. The Matson Line has no steerage service, having followed the policy of the Los Angeles Line of discontinuing that service. As a result of the discontinuance of the steerage of these two steamship lines, no Filipinos landed in California during the month of December, and of course none will come in the future from Hawaii. The problem of Filipino immigration in so far as the State of California is concerned, therefore, is thus practically solved. The Filipinos come to the United States direct from the Philippines through the Dollar and other steamship lines plying between Manila and Seattle and San Francisco, but recently departures from the United States are larger than arrivals. The following information, contained in a radiogram received in the Bureau of Insular Affairs from the Governor General of the Philippine Islands relative to departure of Filipinos from Manila for the United States and arrivals from the United States during the last three months of 1930, substantiates this statement: Departures from Manila to United States: October, 221; November, 108; December, 67; total, 396. Arrivals in Manila from United States: October, 234; November, 394; December, 328; total, 956. It will thus be noted that there were 560 more departures from the United States than arrivals during the above period. The following table compiled from the official monthly reports of the Bureau of Customs of the Philippine Islands and from the official monthly reports of the United States Commissioner of Immigration of Hawaii show the number of Filipinos arriving in the United States from the Philippines and Hawaii and departing from the United States to the Philippines and Hawaii during the year 1930. 1 Monthly reports of the United States commissioner of immigration at Honolulu showing number of Filipinos leaving Hawaii for the continental United States and the number of Filipinos arriving in Hawaii from the continental United States. 2 Monthly reports of collector of customs, Manila, showing number of Filipinos leaving the Philippine Islands for the continental United States and the number of Filipinos arriving in the Philippine Islands from the continental United States. The figures on the above table show that for the year 1930, a total of 6,930 Filipinos landed in the United States from the Philippines and Hawaii, and that a total of 2,136 Filipinos departed from the United States to the Philippines and Hawaii, leaving only a total of 3,794 who remained in the United States of those who came that year. These figures were taken from the official reports of our own Bureau of Insular Affairs of the War Department. I call particular attention to this source of information because there are so many conflicting figures as to the number of Filipinos coming to the United States that it is necessary to choose the figures of our own officials, because they are supposedly the most accurate. Estimates as to the number of Filipinos that came to the United States last year were as high as 10,000, which is three times more than those that actually came. The following table will show the number of Filipinos in the United States from 1919 to 1929: 1 Estimated. Based on difference of figures of H. S. P. A. of 108,693 and Bureau of Labor of 97,418. 2 Based on estimated average number of Filipinos returning to Philippine Islands in 1927 and 1928. (a) and (d) from reports of insular collector of customs. (b) and (e) from reports of Philippine Bureau of Labor. (g) obtained by subtracting (f) from (c). It will be noted from the above table that during the last years, there was a continuous decrease in the number of Filipinos remaining in the United States. This decrease began in 1927 and continued on to 1930 when, as shown in the first table, only 3,794 of those who came remained in the United States. To recapitulate, we have the following figures on the number of Filipinos in continental United States to-day: Filipino population in the United States as of Jan. 1, 1920 (from 5, 603 31, 326 Number of Filipinos remaining in the United States from 1920-1929, inclusive (excluding those coming from Hawaii).. Number of Filipinos migrating to the United States from Hawaii be- Number of Filipinos remaining in the United States in 1930, excluding those coming from Hawaii.... 2, 480 14, 000 2, 314 55, 723 Total number of Filipinos in United States to-day---II. To lose income through decline of trade and consequent curtailment of production. If this limitation is placed on Philippine immigration it will have a tendency to open the whole oriental immigration problem. There is a well-founded fear that our action will be used by interested countries to spread distrust of us throughout the Orient for the purpose of trade advantage, and that we will thereby lose far more from unemployment resulting from the loss of manufactured exportable products than we could possibly lose by permitting Filipinos to come freely to the mainland. Our trade with the Philippines has increased by leaps and bounds during the past 20 years. In 1928 our total trade with the islands amounted to nearly $200,000,000 in value. Can we afford to put that trade in peril during this period of economic depression and when our world trade shows a tremendous decline? III. Legal. It is a fair legal question if Congress has the legislative authority to put the Filipino into the alien class and consider, for any purpose, the Philippines to be "foreign country. Chief Justice Marshall stated the grounds upon which our Government is authorized to acquire territory other than by purchase in the case of Ins. Co. v. Cantor (1 Pet. 540) as follows: The Constitution confers absolutely on the Government of the Union the powers of making war, and of making treaties; consequently that Government possesses the power of acquiring territory, either by conquest or by treaty. In the case of De Lima v. Bidwell (182 U. S.) the Supreme Court said: One of the ordinary incidents of a treaty is the cession of territory. At the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, Spain ceded the Philippines to the United States. They came as an incident of conquest and we acquired absolute sovereignty over them. The force and effect of the treaty has been construed by the Supreme Court in the Diamond Rings case (183 U. S. 176–180) in the following applicable language: * * * By the third article of the treaty Spain ceded to the United States "the Archipelago known as the Philippine Islands " The Philippines thereby ceased in the language of the treaty, "to be Spanish." Ceasing to be Spanish, they ceased to be foreign country. They came under the complete and absolute |