Filipino Americans

by Jon Sterngass

Published 30 December 2006
In the early 2000s, Filipinos made up the second-largest immigrant group in the United States and the third largest in Canada. Filipino immigrants in the early 1900s worked as agricultural laborers in California and Hawaii, cannery workers in Alaska and Washington, and sailors in the U.S. Navy. Since 1970, they have played crucial roles in such fields as computer programming and nursing. Filipinos strive to balance the homeland concepts of pakikisama (smooth social interaction) and bayanihan (cooperative work) with American individualism and materialism. Enhanced by full-color photographs and a generous array of study features, this much-needed book examines the history, culture, trials, and successes of a group sometimes referred to as ""invisible immigrants.