[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 4]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 5931-5932]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




      THE POTENTIAL IMPACT OF H.R. 1287: FILIPINO VETERANS FAMILY 
                           REUNIFICATION ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. MAZIE K. HIRONO

                               of hawaii

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 7, 2007

  Ms. HIRONO. Madam Speaker, on the first of this month, I reintroduced 
the Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Act (H.R. 1287), which will 
provide for the expedited reunification of the families of our Filipino 
World War II veterans.
  This body has many times heard accounts of the bravery of the 
Filipino veterans: how they fought shoulder to shoulder with American 
servicemen; how they sacrificed for the same just cause. For too long, 
we have ignored the promise we made to those men to provide benefits 
and care equal to that provided to our own soldiers.
  As the House prepares for debate on comprehensive immigration reform, 
let us remember the broken promises made to our Filipino World War II 
veterans and provide for a meaningful way to make amends by expediting 
the immigration petitions of their sons and daughters.
  I would like to submit into the Congressional Record an article that 
recently appeared in the Washington Post that humanizes the intent of 
my bill.

                [From the Washington Post, Mar. 4, 2007]

                 Hope for Amends to Filipino Immigrants

                           (By N.C. Aizenman)

       Amid the wrangling over immigration reform, virtually 
     everyone in Congress appears to agree on one point: Filipino-
     born veterans who fought alongside U.S. troops during World 
     War II deserve a break.
       Denied the right to immigrate to the United States until 
     1990, they came hoping that their children could follow them 
     here later, just as other groups have done. But the adult 
     children have been required to wait twice as long--up to 16 
     years--as anyone else. With the veterans often too old and 
     sick to travel home, many have died while waiting to be 
     reunited with their families.
       Now, after several longtime backers have risen to key 
     positions in Congress, Filipino American advocates are 
     hopeful that legislation will be pushed through to exempt the 
     veterans' children from the immigration delay. They also are 
     optimistic about a potentially more controversial bill that 
     would grant Filipino veterans military pensions.
       About 5,000 veterans in the United States would stand to 
     benefit from a change in immigration provisions, and an 
     additional 10,000 in the Philippines could be eligible for 
     pensions.
       To many in the 2-million-strong Filipino American 
     community, the issue represents a chance to cement their 
     political identity in a nation where they have long felt 
     invisible, even though Filipinos rank second, behind 
     Mexicans, in the number of immigrants living in the United 
     States.
       ``Historically, we Filipinos have always been looked down 
     on as your little brown brothers--as these acquiescent people 
     who would just accept anything Uncle Sam would do to them,'' 
     said Jon Melegrito, communications director of the National 
     Federation of Filipino American Associations. ``This is about 
     asserting who we are as a people and how we served this 
     country. . . . It's a call to action to stop acting like 
     colonial slaves and to start acting like first-class 
     citizens.''
       The effort builds on an association with the United States 
     that dates to 1898, when the United States acquired the 
     Philippines from Spain after winning the Spanish-American 
     War.
       Laws and discriminatory practices against all Asian 
     immigrants kept Filipino numbers in the United States low 
     through the first half of the 1900s. But in the Philippines, 
     many residents were taught English and raised to think of 
     themselves as something akin to Americans.
       Celestino Almeda, 90, a veteran who lives in Alexandria, 
     remembered that the director of his elementary school in 
     Manila led students in a pledge of allegiance to the American 
     flag every morning.
       ``We also celebrated all the holidays: Washington's 
     birthday, Armistice Day,'' Almeda said. ``In our mind, it was 
     like America was our mother country.''
       When Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941, more than 
     200,000 Filipinos joined Americans in waging a fierce 
     resistance, enduring such horrors as the Bataan Death March 
     and the grueling guerrilla campaign that followed. 
     Technically, the Filipino fighters were under overall U.S. 
     command. But within months of the Allied victory, Congress 
     stripped most of them of their rights as foreign veterans of 
     U.S. forces--including the opportunity to become U.S. 
     citizens--on the grounds that the Philippines was about to be 
     granted independence.
       Even so, the Philippines continued its close affiliation 
     with the United States. Thousands of Filipinos joined the 
     U.S. Navy, which until recently had major bases there. By 
     1970, there were more Filipinos in the U.S. Navy than in the 
     Philippine Navy.
       And, after 1965, when Congress repealed the nationality 
     quota system that had practically prohibited Asians from 
     immigrating, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos streamed in.
       Ranging from unskilled workers and nannies to nurses and 
     professionals who came in on occupational preference visas, 
     the new arrivals immediately formed social, cultural and 
     professional organizations. Before long, they were rising to 
     prominent positions in government, unions and the military. 
     Several won elected office, including in Prince George's 
     County, where a sizable community settled.
       Yet when it came to turning their clout into political 
     activism on behalf of Filipino

[[Page 5932]]

     American causes, many of the immigrants hesitated, said Bing 
     Cardenas Branigin, 50, a former regional chairman of the 
     Filipino American federation.
       ``There was this sense that you shouldn't make trouble, 
     that you shouldn't contradict the government,'' she said. 
     ``You should just pay your taxes and send your kids to school 
     and keep quiet.''
       That began to change in the mid-1970s when anger spread 
     over the repressive policies of the Filipino president, 
     Ferdinand Marcos. As much as their opposition to Marcos 
     galvanized the Filipino American community, it also caused 
     rifts with those who supported Marcos.
       After Marcos was ousted, community leaders looked to 
     refocus their newfound energy on a more unifying issue. The 
     fight for veterans' equity was a natural choice.
       Since then, the veterans have won some of the benefits they 
     lost after the war. Most notably, in 1990, Congress granted 
     Filipino World War II veterans the same opportunity to 
     naturalize offered to all other foreign nationals who served 
     in the U.S. armed forces.
       But the Filipino veterans remain ineligible for a military 
     pension, forcing many of the more than 24,000 elderly 
     veterans who became U.S. citizens after 1990 to live off food 
     stamps and Supplemental Security Income payments.
       Joaquin Tejada, 84, a former guerrilla fighter who survived 
     two years resisting the Japanese from jungle hideouts, said 
     he now struggles to get by with his $545 monthly SSI check. 
     The rent for the two-bedroom apartment he shares with another 
     Filipino World War II veteran in Columbia Heights takes $275.
       ``By the end of the month, it's hard to buy even basic 
     food,'' said Tejada, who proudly sported an American flag tie 
     during an interview.
       Then there is the l6-year wait veterans face if they wish 
     to bring over their adult children, an unintended consequence 
     of the 1965 law lifting the quotas that had prevented most 
     Asians from immigrating.
       In their place, Congress introduced a complicated system 
     meant to offer every country the same number of family 
     reunification visas. But because Filipino applicants far 
     outnumber the yearly slots allotted to them, they face the 
     longest delays--22 years to sponsor an adult brother or 
     sister, for instance, compared with 11 years for applicants 
     of most other nationalities.
       Candida Romulo, 72, said she and her husband, Bayani, a 
     veteran who became a lawyer in Manila, would not have 
     naturalized and moved to Oxon Hill had they known that the 
     wait to sponsor their grown children would be so long.
       ``We did it because we wanted to give them the 
     opportunities of living in this country. It was going to be 
     our gift to them,'' Romulo said during an interview in a 
     living room crammed with photographs of her four children.
       Soon after the couple's arrival, Bayani developed a medical 
     condition requiring frequent dialysis, making visits to the 
     Philippines impossible. Because of their pending residency 
     applications, his children were unable to get visas to visit 
     him.
       When Bayani suffered a severe stroke in September, his 
     eldest son wasn't able to relay his final words to his father 
     over the phone before he died.
       ``The receiver couldn't reach his bed in the ICU,'' Candida 
     Romulo said. ``So I told my husband, `Your son says that he 
     loves you very much and that he's so proud that you are his 
     father.' My husband couldn't speak, but I could tell that he 
     understood, because there were tears in his eyes.''
       Now Romulo worries that her son may never gain entry to the 
     United States, because if a sponsor dies while the visa 
     application is pending, there is a chance that the 
     application will be annulled.
       But she said she is still praying that Congress will pass 
     the legislation for the sake of those veterans who remain 
     alive.
       ``If that happens, I know my husband will be very happy 
     about it, even if he is already in heaven,'' she said.

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