Today, out of the 250,000 Filipino World War II veterans, only 18,000 are left. Of that number some 2,000 reside in my home state of Hawaii. As Filipino veterans are entering the sunset years of their lives, Congress is running out of time to fulfill our obligations to them.
I am an original cosponsor of H.R. 760, the Filipino Veterans Equity Act of 2007, which provides the necessary reclassification of the service of Filipino veterans to make them eligible for all the veterans' benefits programs administered by the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs. I have also introduced the Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Act (H.R. 1287), which would reunite Filipino veterans with their families by exempting their adult children, many of whom have been on immigration waiting lists for decades, from the worldwide and numerical limitations on immigrant visas.