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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, February 25, 2007

Filipino vets' families deserve special status

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Filipino veterans, who fought alongside U.S. troops during World War II, have waited far too long — more than 60 years — to get what's due them.

While they still seek full pension benefits from Congress, another key measure would give them something that could be more important in their senior years: family reunification.

Senate Bill 671, recently introduced by U.S. Sens. Dan Akaka and Daniel Inouye, grants special immigrant status to the children of naturalized Filipino veterans, enabling them to move up in the visa backlog that has had some family members waiting for entry to the U.S. for nearly 20 years.

Indeed, this solution is not a simple one. In the aftermath of Sept. 11, visa policies were rightly revamped and strictly enforced. To expedite the process for these family members and not others merits concern.

But let's look at the bigger picture: An estimated 200,000 Filipinos were drafted in 1941 to fight under Gen. Douglas MacArthur when war broke out. The men were promised citizenship and benefits by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But Congress reneged on the promise with the Rescission Act of 1946.

Not until 1990 did the Immigration Act allow these men citizenship. But they have yet to receive the same benefits as their GI counterparts, and the change in immigration law did not extend the same rights to the veterans' sons and daughters.

Today, there are an estimated 5,000 Filipino veterans in Hawai'i and the Mainland, according to the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, but most are well into their 80s and 90s — and their number is quickly dwindling.

Reuniting these men with their children is not only the fair thing for the U.S. government to do, it's the least it could do.

And Congress shouldn't stop there. The aging veterans deserve to see the final piece in their struggle for equity: the granting of full pension benefits that could mean $200 a month per veteran.

For these men, it's more than just a paycheck — it's a promise.