This historical dissertation focuses on Filipino nurses in the United States (U.S.) and their political action around international nurse migration policies. Since its formation in 1979, the Philippine Nurses Association of America (PNAA) has become a platform for Filipino nurses’ political action. Relying on a range of primary sources including Congressional proceedings, PNAA archives, Filipino American community newspapers, Philippine newspapers, U.S. nursing journals, as well as original oral-history interviews, this dissertation reconstructs the broader social, political, and economic context around the PNAA’s efforts to influence international nurse migration policy. Ultimately, I argue that the PNAA’s political action came to leverage its unique position—situated in the U.S. and connected back to the Philippine government—to shape international nurse migration policies, especially immigration reform, licensure requirements, as well as industry standards for recruitment companies and ethical recruitment practices. By taking a broader transnational approach to understanding these policies, this dissertation also juxtaposes the PNAA’s establishmentarian political action with other Filipino political movements’ strategies, as well as recognizes limits to the PNAA’s political action. Finally, this dissertation repositions U.S. imperialism in the historiography of Filipino nurse migration by examining more direct ways that recent policies have sustained and reconfigured U.S. influence on Filipino nurses and Philippine nursing standards.