WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Veterans Affairs Committee held a hearing Feb. 15, on the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill on the eve of the 61st anniversary of the day the U.S. Congress passed the infamous Rescission Act. The act had excluded Filipino WW II veterans of the U.S. Army Forces in the Far East (USAFFE) from receiving U.S. military benefits.
At the committee hearing chaired by Rep. Bob Filner (D-Calif.), 15 witnesses testified in support of the bill, that will provide surviving veterans with a monthly disability pension.
Among those who testified were Franco Arcebal, 83, a former Philippine guerrilla intelligence officer in WWII who serves as vice president of the American Coalition for the Filipino Veterans, and Alma Quitans Kern, chair of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, which initiated the formation of the 20-organization National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity last December 7.
As veterans affairs committee chair, appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Filner has fast-tracked the equity bill, holding the hearing just two weeks after re-filing it as HR 760 on Jan. 31, with Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) among the co-sponsors.
“We’re going to try to take this up in committee within a few weeks,” Filner said, “and I would like to take it on the floor [for a vote] before Bataan Day [April 9].”
Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) raised the question of whether the U.S. could afford to pay the full $880 maximum veterans monthly pension.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) supported the proposal of Rep. Lane Evans (D-Ill.) allocating a $200 monthly pension for veterans in the Philippines, which he said was “reasonable” given the low cost of living in the Philippines and fiscal constraints in the U.S. budget.
Whether the Filipino veterans should accept anything less than the maximum amount to which they are entitled has been a source of contention, and veterans groups said the amount of the pension should be determined later in the appropriations committees of the Congress.
Philippine Embassy Deputy Chief of Mission Carlos D. Sorreta said 472,000 vets originally served under the USAFFE, but only 20,000 are still alive today. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs provided a higher figure of 22,000 with about 15,000 in the Philippines and 7,000 in the U.S.
Sorreta urged the committee to pass the bill “on behalf of a nation that has stood by yours in the name of liberty and freedom in World War II, in the uncertain decades after, and in facing today’s new and grave challenges.”
House approval of the equity bill will provide momentum for its Senate counterpart sponsored by Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawai‘i). Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawai‘i), the new chairman of the committee on veterans affairs, promised a senate hearing in April.
“We will get it in and we will get it passed this year,” Inouye said.
Akaka also reintroduced his Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Bill, which “seeks to reunite naturalized Filipino veterans with their sons and daughters, many of whom have been on the immigration waiting lists for years, by exempting the veterans’ adult children from the numerical limitations on immigrant visas.”
It has been 61 years of struggle for the Filipino WWII veterans to rescind the Rescission Act. The dwindling number of surviving veterans hopes that the equity bill will finally pass the U.S. Congress this year.