Property relations: alien land laws and the racial formation of Filipinos as aliens ineligible to citizenship

Because Filipino Americans are racially categorized as Asians today, many scholars presume that they were automatically included within the provisions of the alien land laws at the time of their legislation. The following article suggests that the racial status of Filipino Americans, during this early period, was much more ambiguous. Instead, most Americans perceived Filipinos in relation to Native and African-Americans. The Alien Land Laws (1913–1952) were, together with anti-miscegenation laws and the Tydings-McDuffie Act, a regime of legal policies that eventually transformed Filipinos into Asians by 1934. Meanwhile, their racial ambiguity provided early Filipino immigrants with significant opportunities to challenge their exclusion in American society, and especially the alien land laws.