Proceedings of the first Independence congress : held in the city of Manila, Philippine islands, February 22-26, 1930 / Published under the direction of Dean maximo M. Kalaw, executive secretary, University of the Philippines.

LABOR SECTION

295

Glancing 'at the map of Asia and its neighborhood, one
cannot help being impressed with the tremendous concentration of population in countries bordering the Philippine Islands. To the north of us there are 78 million Japanese; to
the northeast we have nearly half a billion Chinese; in our
immediate neighborhood, in the regions comprising the southwestern part of Asia and the East Indies, there are 150 million
Malayans; while not far distant from these regions there are,
in India, 300 million Hindus, The Philippines, therefore,
with its proportionately vast territory and abundant natural
resources has been claimed to be the only outlet for overpopulated Oriental countries the flow and invasion from which
are at present precluded by the United States Immigration and
Chinese Exclusion Laws which are now being enforced in the
Philippines.
However, with the advent of independence, the imperialists
claim that the immigration tide into the Philippines, either
from Japan or China, will become inevitable, and that it will
not be long before the Chinese or Japanese shall swamp the
Filipinos. American government officials, of whom Governor
General Harrison was the foremost, have openly admitted their
fears of a possible population menace from either China or
Japan, and have expressed in no uncompromising terms their
opposition to either contract labor or Chinese immigration.
Filipino intellectuals, in the face of a seemingly inevitable flow
of Orientals into the country in case of independence, have
adopted the compromising attitude of a limited form of im,
migration, similar to the quota system in the United States,
instead of a rigid exclusion law, in order to alleviate Chinese
ill feeling. A sector of Filipino officialdom in the Philippine
government, which has been in contact with the various classes
of immigrants into the Philippines and which has sincerely
felt the need of heeding the demand of the capitalists for an
assimilable race of immigrants to come into the Islands, has
openly advocated allowing the entry of indentured Javenese
labor from Java and Madura. On the other hand, labor,
because of the persistent attitude of the Chinese in coming into
the islands in spite of the Chinese exclusion laws, has bitterly