The Exclusion of Filipino Amerasians from the 1982 & 1987 Amerasian Immigration and Homecoming Acts

Abstract

Since the end of the 19th century, the United States has had a military, political and social presence in the Indo-Pacific Region, including the Philippines. US presence in Asia has produced offspring born from the union of US military and civilian personnel and the native women population. For the Philippines, these are the Filipino Amerasians, the abandoned children of American fathers who refused to acknowledge paternity and have relegated Filipino Amerasians to lives of marginalization and poverty. The United States enacted the Amerasian Immigration Act (AIA) in 1982 and the Amerasian Homecoming Act (AHA) in 1987. Both Acts provided Amerasians from Thailand, Korea, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam preferential status to immigrate to the United States. Filipino Amerasians were not included in this legislation or any other subsequent Amerasian legislation.

This research examines the reasons for the exclusion of Filipino Amerasians from the AIA and AHA using a mixed-method approach of both Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) and Bivariate Linear Regression (BLR). It is a comprehensive analysis looking into the convergence of race, gender, colonialism, The Cold War, and the Philippine Catholic Church in explaining the decisions and intent of policymakers, both in the United States and in the Philippines, to exclude Filipino Amerasians. Although there is no singular cause for the exclusion of Filipino Amerasians from the AIA and AHA, this research does find that the Philippines and the US government purposefully excluded Filipino Amerasians from the AIA and AHA to satisfy each country’s political, economic, and Cold War posture in the region.