As veterans bill goes to House, polarity returns

LOS ANGELES — The Filipino war veterans’ long, protracted march to US Congress recognition – via S. 1315 or the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 – negotiates what could be its penultimate lap.

The bill, which was recently passed by the Senate by a landslide vote of 96-1, now moves to the House for debate and a floor vote.

If it succeeds in wooing the House – a formidable fortress of Republicans with generally anti-immigrant sentiment—the bill will then go to President Bush for signature. This week, June 3, the House of Representatives returns to the floor. The Filipino community waits with bated breath.

“We have to put this bill on the floor (on June 3) before we lose support," Ben de Guzman, executive director of Washington-based National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (Nafve), told a group of veterans and local media at the Philippine Consulate here last week.

“But we can’t control Congress. They might set this aside and then put it on the floor before July 31—before the August recess. So July 31st will be our ideal drop-dead deadline. If we can’t do it by then, it’d be next to impossible. By September, the representatives will be busy on the (presidential) campaign trail."

Irrelevant of the outcome at the House floor this week, the fight for Filipino World War II veterans’ honor has always been a battle fought first within a divided Filipino front—each pushing for two different versions of the bill.

One version of S-1315 seeks provision of $375 a month pension to Philippine based veterans who have dependents, $300 a month to those without dependents and $200 a month to their widows; the other calls for $300 a month pension to veterans back home while the 6,000 of their colleagues in the US would be entitled to $900 a month.

“It’s only us who’re to blame (in case the bill doesn’t pass)," Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the most prominent Filipino American general in the U.S. Army, told Philippine News in March. “This division among veterans’ advocates is troubling."

“Don’t make it a bumper sticker. Why do we have an East Coast set of circumstances and a West Coast set of circumstances? It makes us look like we’re divided on the issue," New America Media quoted Taguba from his talk before a community gathering in San Francisco last year. “If we stand together with other veterans associations like Japanese American veterans, Korean American veterans, and others, we have a better chance of passing this bill." PASCKIE PASCUA, Philippine News

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