The choices of the
Filipino veterans

WHILE there are dozens of Filipino World War II veterans groups all over the United States, the leadership of the national organizations directing the agenda of the Filipino veterans are non-veterans affiliated with the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), the National Network for Veterans Equity (NNVE) and the Filipino Civil Rights Advocates (FilCRA).

Together, these national groups are supporting "solely and exclusively" HR 677, a bill currently pending in the US House of Representatives that would amend the 1946 Rescission Act which stripped Filipino World War II soldiers of their U.S. veterans status. California Representatives Randy Cunningham (R) and Bob Filner (D) are the main sponsors of this bill.

In the next month, NaFFAA's 12 regions will be mobilizing their local chapters and affiliates in a coordinated campaign to sign up more sponsors to HR 677 which, to date, has already garnered close to 60 supporters in the House. NaFFAA members will join other organizations in two days of lobbying in Capitol Hill from May 3-4.

There is, however, one national organization involved in the Filipino veterans campaign that is actually led by Filipino WW II veterans -- the American Coalition for the Filipino Veterans (ACFV).

This coalition was founded in 1995 by Patrick Ganio Sr., 83, a decorated Purple Heart veteran of Bataan and Corregidor, and Guillermo Rumingan, 78, a disabled former Philippine Scout.

Ganio immigrated to the US in the 1980s after he was petitioned by his daughter, a US citizen who immigrated to the US as a registered nurse. Though a public school teacher in the Philippines, Ganio found a job in the U.S. as a property manager of a Tudor apartment building on Embassy Row in Washington, DC.

Rumingan immigrated to the US in the 1970s, initially as an overstaying tourist (TNT), and who found a job as a taxi driver and later as a chauffeur for an Arab ambassador.

Using Ganio's one-bedroom apartment as their base, the two wartime comrades and their fellow veterans began a lobbying effort in the 1980s, where they met individually with members of the US Congress and with White House officials to persuade them to support the granting of benefits to Filipino WW II veterans. It was in his small apartment that Ganio played host to a succession of Philippine Congressmen who wanted updates on their lobbying efforts.

Ganio and Rumingan and their band of brothers and sisters achieved their first major victory in November 1990 when Congress passed the 1990 Immigration Act which granted US citizenship to Filipino WWII veterans. Because of his lobbying efforts, Ganio was invited to attend the White House ceremony where President George H. Bush signed the bill into law.

Though I had heard of them for years, I met Ganio and Rumingan for the first time in February of 1997 when I joined them in what was for them a regular lobbying day, trudging through the halls of Congress to personally lobby senators and representatives.

On that day, we were accompanied by Eric Lachica, the son of a WWII veteran, who had quit his job working for a non-profit community organization in Maryland in 1996 to work with Patrick and Guillermo in the ACFV.

On the day I joined them in 1997, we met with Representative Bob Filner, the main sponsor of the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill in the US Congress, and with Marie Blanco, the legislative aide of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), himself a WWII veteran who has been the most dependable Senate supporter of the Filipino veterans. Marie had been quietly working behind the scenes to garner the support of the legislative aides of other Senators and Representatives to support the Filipino veterans.

Marie told us that members of the US Congress were reluctant to support the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill because of the money involved. Back then, Marie's estimate was that it would cost about 750 million dollars a year to finance the veterans equity bill which would then have provided a 700-dollar-a-month pension to about 60,000 Filipino veterans who were still alive then.

Marie informed us that it was Senator Inouye's advice that the Filipino veterans adopt a step-by-step approach to securing veterans benefits. This would mean lobbying for benefits that were practical and financially feasible like burial benefits, health care benefits, SSI benefits, war-related injury benefits and disability pension benefits. Taken individually, each of these benefits had a low price tag and was winnable, she said.

Following Senator Inouye's advice, Ganio and Rumingan directed their efforts to lobbying for those individual benefits. And one by one, the veterans gained their benefits.

In 1999, the SSI Special Veterans Bill passed giving Filipino American WWII veterans 75 percent of the SSI benefits they were receiving in the US when they returned to the Philippines. This 400-dollar-a-month benefit in Philippine pesos amounted to about 20,000 pesos, the average monthly salary of a college professor in the Philippines.

In 2000, the Full Service Connected Compensation Benefit Law was passed which raised war-related compensation for Filipino veterans from half to full benefits. Also, in the same year, the Burial Benefits Law passed which allowed Filipino-American WWII veterans to be buried in national veterans cemeteries.

In 2002, the veterans succeeded in securing the restoration of the one-million-dollar annual VA Grant-in-Aid to the Philippine Veterans Medical Center.

In 2003, the veterans secured passage of the Veterans HealthCare Act which restored full VA medical benefits to US-based Filipino WWII veterans, a package which amounted to about 19.6 million dollars a year.

While Ganio was invited by the first President Bush to witness the White House signing of the Filipino Veterans Naturalization Bill in 1990, Rumingan was similarly honored to be invited by the second President Bush to witness the Oval Office signing into law of HR 2297, the Veterans HealthCare Act, on December 16, 2003.

This law was particularly meaningful to Rumingan as it finally extended to him the full war service compensation benefits for the tuberculosis that nearly killed him fifty years ago that had been denied him until then.

There are now only 29,350 Filipino WWII veterans who are still alive, generally in their late 70s and 80s, according to the May 14, 2003 news release of the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

HR 677 would provide these veterans, whether in the Philippines or in the US, with 800 dollars a month in disability pension. It is estimated that the total annual cost of this bill would be 218 million dollars.

But based on their 20-year experience of lobbying in Capitol Hill, Ganio and Rumingan believe that there is absolutely no chance that HR 677 would ever be passed by the US Congress and signed into law by President Bush, especially now with the huge budget deficit that the US has incurred as a result of the Iraq quagmire.

Instead, Ganio, Rumingan and their ACFV coalition are backing Senator Inouye's bill, S. 68, the Filipino Veterans Benefits Improvement Act, which would provide 800 dollars a month for US-based veterans and 100 dollars a month for Philippine-based veterans. The annual cost of this bill would be 22 million dollars, which Ganio and Rumingan believe is low enough to be winnable.

They point out that 100 dollars a month in the Philippines amounts to 5,600 pesos a month, which together with the 5,000 pesos a month they receive from the Philippine government would make their total monthly income comparable to the average salary of a public school teacher in the Philippines.

The Philippine government and the Veterans Federation of the Philippines of Colonel Emmanuel de Ocampo support S. 68 because they also believe that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush (or might never come from Bush).

But while this is a practical matter for Ganio and Rumingan and their veteran comrades in the US and in the Philippines who support S. 68, it is a matter of principle to the non-veteran supporters in the NaFFAA, NNVE and FilCRA who fervently believe that HR 677 is the only bill that should be supported, regardless of whether it has any hope of passage.

Should the Filipino community only support HR 677 as a matter of principle or S. 68 as a practical matter? That's the choice that faces us.

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