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US Senate’s Veterans Bill
I am the son of a dead Ilocano
Filipino-American Second World War veteran.
The Manila Times and other papers
have been publishing news articles about the US Senate’s passage
of the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007. Today, your
article is about how Filipino Sen. Richard Gordon and President G.
M. Arroyo helped make American senators pass the bill.
Yet no one ever mentions that
there would not have been a need for this new US Senate legislation
if the US Congress had not suddenly passed a law rescinding the
USA’s obligation to pay complete veterans benefits to Filipino
veterans who were American nationals during World War II. The US
Congress committed an act of racial discrimination with that rescission
law. What this new Senate bill does is remove the injustice done to
Filipino-American veterans (for every Pinoy was a Fil-Am until July
4, 1946) who should get all the benefits an American on the US
mainland was receiving.
The US senators of 2008 are
undoing the injustice done by Americans in 1946. But about 95
percent of the 180,000 Fil-Americans who served as American soldiers
in World War II have died. There is even a chance that President G.
W. Bush will veto the Senate bill.
Filipinos have nothing to be
happy about in this affair.
Alfonso G. Quijano Jr.
España St., Sampaloc
City of Manila
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