Speech #820211119

In the dark days of 1942 when our forces were being pressed and harried in the Pacific and our Army under General MacArthur was being overwhelmed by the superior forces of the Japanese Empire. the Filipino people remained staunch and true to us. Their soldiers fought side by side with our soldiers. and in greater numbers. through the hell and fire of Bataan and Corregidor. During the dark days. when we were sending daily messages of encouragement to the Filipino people and daily messages of gratitude to the Filipino troops on Bataan. the Congress enacted the bill which removed Filipinos from the list of oriental people ineligible for naturalization in this country. We were proud. we said at that time. to number among our citizens persons of Filipino birth and race. When the Philippines became an independent republic in 1946. we granted that country an annual immigration quota of 100. and the Philippines. along with India and China remain to this date the only countries in the Orient which have immigration quotas and whose citizens are eligible for naturalization. But when we granted Indians and Chinese the right of naturalization in 1944 and 1945 Congress did provide that persons born in other countries of Chinese and Indian ancestry should be charged to the Chinese and Indian quotas rather than to the quotas of the lands of their actual birth. No such discriminatory provision was. of course. enacted in the case of the Filipino people. Now. today. we find that in this McCarran bill we are going to remove racial discriminations. Yes. we are going to remove racial discrimination by establishing new ones. The McCarran bill actually proposes in section 204 not to remove present discrimination against Chinese and Indians. but rather to go in the opposite direction and to include Filipinos in the discriminations now applicable only to Chinese and Indians. As the whole concept of the AsiaticPacific triangle and the charging of persons of Asiatic bloodwhatever that isagainst quotas of their racial ancestry is in itself an abomination. so this special discrimination against Filipinos is a special abomination. Not only will it affront all the people of the Philippines in principle. but it will also in effect reduce the Philippine quota. It will reduce that quota by the number of persons born in England.