Immigration
Although the majority of Filipinos are well-educated professionals who arrived during the 1990s, a handful had settled decades earlier – the 1936 census records six people born in the ‘Philippine Islands’.
By 2001, there were 11,091 residents, 57% living in Auckland, 14% in Wellington and 13% in the South Island.
Students
Students began arriving in the 1960s under the Colombo Plan, a Commonwealth scholarship scheme. In 1962 the Philippines became one of the first Asian countries to have New Zealand visa fees waived.
Filipino students formed close links with Wellington’s Philippine embassy, and became its unofficial cultural troupe. Touring the country during holidays, their performances featured folk dances and pangkat kawayan (bamboo orchestra), using the embassy’s musical instruments.
A lonely Filipina
A Filipino student in the early 1980s reported meeting an isolated Filipino woman in the South Island:
‘I met Filipino women everywhere … One poignant meeting was with a woman in a small town near Lake Pukaki …The hotel manager told me that their kitchen help was Filipina, so I asked him to bring me to her … She was stunned meeting me (I was too). She cried. She … hadn’t seen or spoken to a Filipino for more than two years … It was so sad as a few miles south in Dunedin and in Invercargill were several Filipinas who were always looking for other Filipinos in the area.’ 1
Filipino–New Zealand marriages
By 1981, the Filipino population totalled 405. Filipino student Ken Ilio, living in Palmerston North at the time, felt these immigrants were ‘mostly the better half of Kiwi-Filipino pairings’. Until the 1990s, most migrants were young women, who had often met New Zealand men through friends or by answering newspaper personal advertisements. A few were even ‘mail-order brides’.
There were over twice as many Filipino women as men in New Zealand by 1991. Not all the marriages lasted; issues such as sending money to relatives in the Philippines could cause tension. Children of these marriages were of mixed ethnicity, and their parents’ approach largely determined how much Filipino culture and language they retained.
Professionals
Filipino immigrants are highly educated, and the immigration rules of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which favoured skilled migrants, made it easier for them to settle.
Many worked as professionals and office workers. In the mid-1990s Auckland Filipinos were settling in suburbs such as Henderson and Mt Roskill.
Among Asian ethnic groups in the 2001 census, Filipinos had the lowest unemployment rate and the highest average income. However, doctors struggled to get their qualifications recognised and often had to undertake further study.
