ABSTRACT
A careful analysis of the Tydings—McDuffie Act indicates that there is very little difference in the political status of the Philippines prior to and after the passage of the Act. A crucial analysis that is missing in all the scholarship written about Philippine independence and the 1934 Tydings—McDuffie Act is the importance of race in the negotiations and eventual passage of the 1934 Act. The Pensionado Act of 1903 allocated funds for Filipino scholars to attend American universities. The first large group of Filipino labor migrants, however, came to the United States under the auspices of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA). The first Filipino exclusion laws proposed to Congress were from California, the state with the largest Filipino population. The door to Filipino immigration was effectively closed shut, but this did not satisfy the anti-Filipino forces, for there still remained thousands of Filipinos in the country.
