Pensionados: Filipino Settlement in Chicago Through Government-Sponsored Students
Areas of History/Tags: Chicago History; Asian American History
Code(s): Complex-- Limited Primary Sources
Overview: Following the Philippine- American War, 1899-1902, then-Governor William Howard Taft promoted ideas aimed at fostering goodwill between Americans and Filipinos. The two bodies of the Philippine Commission, appointed by U.S. Presidents McKinley and Taft, drew in the Pensionado Act, Act Number 845, which Congress then passed on August 26, 1903. This Act, meant as a symbol of good faith, was a sponsorship program that would allow Filipino students to attend school in the United States. In its first year, of the twenty thousand applications submitted only one hundred were selected, and as much as a quarter of those selected attended schools in Chicago. Often from wealthy and elite families, those who met the scholarship requirements became the first pensionados. They planned to only be students, aware that it was temporary, they wanted to acquire the American diploma which they believed would boost their place on the Islands’ ladder of success. Initially, students would graduate and then return to the Philippines. However, many students in the 1920s did not return. Stranded by the devastation caused by the Great Depression, Chicago’s community of Filipino students soon became a community of Filipino immigrants.
Relevant Collections:
Preliminary sources:
Secondary
Primary
Areas of History/Tags: Chicago History; Asian American History
Code(s): Complex-- Limited Primary Sources
Overview: Following the Philippine- American War, 1899-1902, then-Governor William Howard Taft promoted ideas aimed at fostering goodwill between Americans and Filipinos. The two bodies of the Philippine Commission, appointed by U.S. Presidents McKinley and Taft, drew in the Pensionado Act, Act Number 845, which Congress then passed on August 26, 1903. This Act, meant as a symbol of good faith, was a sponsorship program that would allow Filipino students to attend school in the United States. In its first year, of the twenty thousand applications submitted only one hundred were selected, and as much as a quarter of those selected attended schools in Chicago. Often from wealthy and elite families, those who met the scholarship requirements became the first pensionados. They planned to only be students, aware that it was temporary, they wanted to acquire the American diploma which they believed would boost their place on the Islands’ ladder of success. Initially, students would graduate and then return to the Philippines. However, many students in the 1920s did not return. Stranded by the devastation caused by the Great Depression, Chicago’s community of Filipino students soon became a community of Filipino immigrants.
Relevant Collections:
- Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey. Records, Box #12, Series #7, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. (Link)
Preliminary sources:
Secondary
- Posadas, Barbara M. “Filipinos.” Encyclopedia of Chicago. (Link)
- Posadas, Barbara M., and Roland L. Guyotte. “Unintentional Immigrants: Chicago’s Filipino Foreign Students Become Settlers, 1900-1941.” Journal of American Ethnic History 9, no. 2 (1990): 26–48. (JSTOR)
Primary
- Act No. 854, (1903-08-26) (Link)