Pinoy issues in America

CALIFORNIA – Daly City, nestled in the San Francisco Bay Area, is known as the Pinoy capital of this state or perhaps in the whole of America; nearly one in three people in Daly are Filipinos or Filipino-Americans (Fil-Ams).

After all, for any Filipino, it would be easy to feel at home in this city touted as the Gateway to the Peninsula – the city mayor is a Filipina-American; there are many stores selling Pinoy goods; you’ll see a kababayan almost everywhere and there are vignettes of Filipino life and culture throughout the city. Some streets, for instance, are Filipino terms – Mabuhay, Bayani, Makibaka and Silang.

Furthermore, Daly has a Sister City relationship with Quezon City.

Daly has a population of roughly 107,000 as of 2022, according to the US Census Bureau and around 33 percent are Filipino-Americans.

California witnessed an influx of migrants from the Philippines after World War II because a lot of Filipinos were granted US citizenship in exchange for their military service during the war. Many of them eventually moved to and settled in Daly.

Indeed, Daly has become the Pinoy capital of California but with this high contraction of Filipinos in Daly, challenges also emerged.

For some Filipinos here, life in the Daly – or perhaps anywhere in the United States – isn’t always as light and sunny as that warm morning of spring last Monday when our group visited the city.

At the City Hall of Daly City, our group of visiting journalists had a meeting with two Filipino-American community organizations, the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON) and Filipino Community Center (FCC).

According to these two non-profit organizations which work on migrant issues, members of the Fil-Am community here continue to face challenges even as many of them have been in the United States for decades now.

The challenges and problems aren’t just all about Asian hate, said FCC acting executive director Elaine Dizon and NAFCON national officer Charles Ramilo.

Asian hate

But Asian hate, indeed, is still prevalent in San Francisco, Dizon said in a meeting with our group, as part of the US Friends, Partners, Allies program.

While this is no longer the case in New York, as Philippine Consul General Senen Mangalile said, the situation is different in San Francisco.

Daly City Mayor Juslyn Manalo, the first Filipina-American to occupy the post, said that Asian hate crime remains a “big thing” in the Bay Area and hasn’t changed much since the pandemic.

Against this backdrop, the NAFCON and FCC groups are working with different groups, including Chinese community organizations in Daly, to fight Asian hate. They opt to transcend the ongoing tensions between the Philippines and China over the West Philippine Sea issue. Chinese-Americans, like Filipinos, have also been a major target of Asian hate.

NAFCON’s Ramilo said members of the Asian community were concerned about the issue because it’s not just a Filipino problem but one that concerns the safety of the community.

“We don’t want anyone experiencing that,” Ramilo said.

As part of efforts to fight Asian hate crimes, the two organizations have been conducting self-defense workshops for Filipino young women and the elderly. This initiative is being done in partnership with a local church to teach Filipinos how to better defend themselves against potential attackers.

^{Other problems}

Aside from Asian hate and discrimination, other issues are lack of job opportunities, undocumented status and even homelessness.

FCC’s Elaine for instance lived as an undocumented immigrant for 15 years.

On homelessness, she said that unfortunately there are indeed Filipinos who do not have their own homes and cannot afford to pay rent. Some of them stay with friends and relatives while some live in cars and park in encampments for homeless people.

Mayor Juslyn, who was born in San Francisco to Filipino parents, said that to help address homelessness in the city, the local government has an ongoing affordable housing project.

Early in her career before she became mayor, she also managed a program called the Bill Sorro Housing Program which helped low to moderate income families access housing opportunities.

She was likewise involved in community service work, providing direct service to the Filipino World War II Veterans, according to her profile.

The great American dream

The Filipino Migrant Center, for its part, said that “one in four Filipinos in the US are undocumented and continue to face difficult challenges such as lack of meaningful work with decent pay at a living wage; lack of comprehensive personal and family benefits; of dignity, respect and fair treatment at work; racism, bogus assimilation and a coercive Philippine labor export policy.”

Amid all these challenges, it doesn’t mean that life in the US has shattered the great American dream of many Filipinos.

Many still dream of making a life here and at least two million Filipinos still leave the Philippines every day. Sadly, some of them are forced to toil in distant lands, including the US, because of the difficult conditions back home.

But I fervently hope that Fil-Ams in America will overcome the challenges. It’s good that FCC and NAFCON are working with Mayor Manalo’s office to help solve these problems.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at EyesWideOpen (Iris Gonzales) on Facebook.