The Philippines have come into the spotlight recently with Typhoon Haiyan lashing

September 29, 2025 admin 0 Comments

The Philippines have come into the spotlight recently with Typhoon Haiyan lashing the Philippines in November and Filipino American Heritage Month being celebrated in October. But how are Filipinos faring in the United States, and in the metro DC area in particular?

Asian Fortune talked with five professionals, four of which are Filipino, both in the DC metro area and California about the growth of this particular group and the challenges and also exciting opportunities it faces.

The growth of the DC’s area’s Filipino population is in keeping with the overall increase in this population on a national level. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Filipinos numbered over 3.4 million, including those who identified as more than one race. This was an increase of more than one million, or 44.5%, since the 2000 Census.

“According to the 2010 DC Asian Census Report, 12.78% of Asian Americans in Washington, DC are Filipinos. In general, the Asian American population has increased nearly 17.5% since the 2000 Decennial Census when Asian Americans represented 3.69% of the District’s population,” Soohyun Koo, executive director of the DC Mayor’s Office on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs (OAPIA), said.

While California had the largest number of Filipinos as of 2010 (over 1.4 million), Virginia ranked No. 10 with 90,493.

Rodel Rodis, who taught Filipino American History at San Francisco State University, explained what is behind this growth. “The general poverty and lack of economic opportunities in the Philippines are the usual push suspects while the job opportunities in the U.S., despite the anemic recovery, and the presence of so many relatives as part of their support network in the U.S. are the pull factors,” he said.

With this growth come challenges associated with strong accents and discrimination, Rodis said.

In addition, many Filipinos are still especially disadvantaged by the U.S. immigration system because they have to endure extremely long waits to immigrate to the U.S., as Gem P. Daus and Erwin de Leon demonstrated with data in a paper for the Filipino Leaders Briefings in Washington, DC (June 2012).

In DC, Koo said that Filipinos face many of the same problems other immigrant populations face: “Filipinos in DC may experience language and cultural barriers when accessing public resources or services that are available to them; they may not be aware of such resources or may not feel such resources are suitable for them, leading to possible isolation from the general community,” she said.