Jose De Asis was born in 1940 near Iloilo City in Visayas. Visayas is an island chain in the central region of the Philippines which was occupied by the Japanese during the Second World War from 1942-1944. Jose De Asis first came to the United States in 1967 under a contract with the United States Navy to work on Guam. Following the Second World War, Guam became a major military hotspot, having army, navy, and air force bases. Immediately after the war and immediately into the Cold War, the island became the headquarters of the Pacific Fleet headed by Chester Nimitz. Guam’s strategic position and proximity to East Asia created the need to construct new facilities and reconstruct infrastructure destroyed by the American and Japanese bombardment of the island in 1944.

The navy and private contractors like MASDELCO first began recruiting Filipino laborers in 1946 from regions in Visayas including Iloilo. Jose De Asis came to Guam in 1967 during the second wave of Filipino labor migration to the island. The second wave occured alongside the U.S occupation in Vietnam and Typhoons Karen in 1962 and Olive in 1963 with damages estimated at 66 million.

At the same time that the island was growing, the political landscape changed as well. In Washington, Congress and the President implemented the Organic Act in 1950 granting American citizenship to Guamanians. Two years later in 1952, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality act. The INS became the source of H-2 Visas while the military still exercised control over the flow of Filipino immigrants entering Guam. The military valued Filipino labor because it was cheaper (although the savings were never calculated). The INS was often put in the position to waive three year visas and offer extensions as a result of a military cost-benefit analysis. The Guam Chamber of Commerce also agreed that slowing Filipino labor would have terrible economic consequences.  

Many Filipinos used Guam as a stepping stone to the continental United States. After they acquired citizenship through political opportunities like the 1988 Amnesty Act, many immediately left. Those that stayed found ways to integrate into the island community with kids who only knew the island as a home other than the Philippines. Yet many of their descendants left to the United States to advance their careers.

Now living in Arizona, Jose de Asis migrated from Guam to connect with his children who made settlements in Arizona. Even though Guam is a part of the United States, Mr. De Asis still found difficulty navigating his new social landscape. It was as if he was an immigrant all over again, faced with a deep cultural shock. It was not out of necessity, but out of longing that his migration story leads him to a suburban neighborhood in row of monotonous homes and picket fences, thousands of miles away from the place he called home for so long.