Unsung America. Prerna Lal
thousands of Filipino veterans would now be eligible for the benefits promised to them during the war, the United States stripped recognition from Filipino soldiers through the Rescission Act of 1946, and it explicitly barred these war veterans from rights, privileges, or benefits. As the cherry on top, the United States also removed a stationed naturalization officer in the Philippines before the war was over, depriving many enlistees the opportunity to even apply to become citizens of the United States.58
World War II compelled the United States to ease citizenship barriers; the country came face to face with its hypocrisy as it fought a war against Nazis abroad while openly discriminating against racial and ethnic groups at home. Congress abolished naturalization quotas with regard to Chinese in 1943, Indians, and Filipinos in 1946, and Japanese and all others, regardless of nationality in 1952.59 Finally, in 1965, Congress eliminated racial quotas in immigration law, and opened the door to immigration based on family and employment.60 The changes allowed new Filipino immigrants to come to the United States, and reinvigorated the desire to emigrate to the US among Filipino veterans, who were now middle-aged.
After almost twenty years, Filipino veterans finally began their struggle to recapture the immigration and military benefits that were denied them at the end of World War II. The first veteran to challenge the denial was Marciano Haw Hibi.
Born in Manila in 1917, Hibi enlisted in the Philippines Scouts, a United States Army unit, in 1941.61 He was captured by Japanese soldiers and released after six months of internment. In April 1945, after the liberation of the Philippines, Hibi rejoined the Scouts and served until his honorable discharge in December 1945. Hibi entered the United States in 1964 on a visitor-for-business visa and filed for naturalization. He asserted that even though he served in the war, the United States failed to inform him of his right to naturalize in due time, and this amounted to affirmative misconduct. In 1967 the district court agreed with Hibi, and the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision, but the Supreme Court dismissed his case on appeal in 1973.62
Inspired by Hibi, other Filipino war veterans filed similar lawsuits—individually and in class actions, alleging that the United States had acted in bad faith in 1945 by removing the only naturalization officer in the Philippines, to ensure that veterans would not be able to naturalize in time.63 They ultimately lost the class action, but their plight reached the ears of some in Congress. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed a law offering citizenship to all Filipino war veterans still alive.64 In this manner, some Filipino war veterans finally became United States citizens, but about fifty years late.
However, even with United States citizenship, the struggle of these veterans continued. Many who immigrated died without reuniting with their sons and daughters, because the sponsorship process to bring them from the Philippines took so long. Of the 4,500 still alive, many were denied benefits under the law.
One example was Celestino Almeda. Before World War II he was a vocational industrial arts instructor in a high school in the Philippines. In 1941 he answered President Roosevelt’s call and enrolled in active duty with the Anti-Sabotage Regiment65 of the US Philippine Commonwealth Army Forces.66 He was honorably discharged in 1946 and kept meticulous records of his service. Almeda finally became a US citizen in 1996. However, since many records had been destroyed or erased, his name was not in the Army’s National Personnel Records, so despite having gained citizenship, he was denied veteran benefits and recognition for his service.
In 2009, the Obama administration provided one-time payments: $15,000 for US citizens and $9,000 for Filipino citizens.67 By the end of 2017, $226 million had been awarded to more than twenty-two thousand people. But Department of Veterans Affairs records also show that more than half of the applicants who tried to qualify were denied. Until recently, Almeda was one of them.
Almeda represented the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans as a spokesperson and testified before Congress.68 A resident of Gaithersburg, Maryland, Almeda became a regular feature in the hallways of congressional buildings. He spoke to as many legislators as he could about the plight of war veterans such as himself who had served honorably but had been cast aside. In 2017, at the age of one hundred, Almeda finally received $15,000 from the Department of Veteran Affairs.69 He also received a Congressional Gold Medal—the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress—and many salutes from members of Congress.70
Alas, many thousands died awaiting the day the United States would recognize their service. Regardless of what one may think of military service, the United States foreclosed a path to citizenship, rescinded veteran’s benefits, and denied recognition to Filipino war veterans for their brave wartime service. Even today, immigrants who have served in the United States military are denied recognition, face deportation for decades-old convictions, and have to worry about family members being deported. They deserve better.
Lundy Khoy
One and a half million refugees from Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos came to the United States as refugees during the 1980s. Their children were very young and grew up as Americans. As refugees in the United States, they faced many obstacles, including language barriers, being resettled in neighborhoods with high crime and unemployment rates, and mental health needs stemming from war-related trauma.
Adjustment was particularly difficult for Cambodian refugees who fled a genocide that killed one third of the population. Ninety-nine percent of Cambodian refugees had faced starvation, ninety percent had lost a close relative in the genocide, and seventy percent continued to suffer from depression.71 Faced with these difficulties, many of the younger refugees who grew up in the United States turned to gangs as surrogate families, and to drugs for escapism.
Lundy Khoy was born in a Thai refugee camp to Cambodian parents who fled the war that had torn their country apart. When Khoy was just one year old, her family was resettled in the United States. When she was nineteen, Khoy fell in with a bad crowd. After a night of partying, a police officer asked her if she had any drugs. She truthfully said she had several tabs of ecstasy, resulting in her arrest for possession with intent to distribute.72 Khoy pled guilty and was given a five-year sentence in criminal court. She was detained by ICE officers, and informed that she would be deported to Cambodia.
Since Cambodia did not issue the travel documents necessary for deportation, Khoy was eventually released from detention. She returned home, finished school, went back to work, actively volunteered in multiple charities in her community, and eventually got married and had a son with her US citizen husband. After working with a filmmaker to document her story in the short film, Save Lundy, she began to advocate in Congress for fair and humane deportation laws. In 2016, Khoy was granted a Governor’s pardon.
Unfortunately, Southeast Asians such as Khoy are three to four times more likely to be deported for old criminal convictions than people from other migrant communities.73 Since 1998, over fifteen thousand individuals have received final orders of deportation to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.74 Through her advocacy, Khoy changed what could have been a disaster, but thousands more have not been given a second chance. They are sent back to countries where they have never set foot before, since many were born in refugee camps outside their parents’ countries of origin.
Over time, naturalization became the government’s second line of defense against immigrants they considered undesirable. Nowadays, immigrants are thoroughly vetted before they can gain lawful permanent residence. And they are vetted again when they apply for US citizenship. In this manner, all immigrants are vetted at least twice before they can become citizens.
The current deportation regime has its roots in efforts to exclude African Americans and Asian Americans. But ironically, these groups remain at the periphery of the debate over immigration policies and reforms. Though today, deportations do not just target black and Asian immigrants, the deportation regime continues to be racialized, even as the government increasingly uses the criminal justice system to funnel people into the prison-deportation pipeline.75. Black immigrants still are disproportionately targeted for deportations, as are Southeast Asian refugees like Khoy.76
Nothing compares to the Fugitive Slave Acts that treated black persons as equivalent to property. But the laws that allowed local authorities to pursue free black persons and fugitives from slavery now emulated by state law enforcement to arrest, detain, and deport immigrants. Engineered by modern-day white