Marie Blanco
Vice Chair of FilVetREP, Former Chief-of-Staff to Senator Daniel Inouye
Marie Blanco is former Chief-of-Staff to Senator Daniel Inouye. In her interview, she shares her involvement in Congress and the Senator’s role in helping Filipino veterans get recognition.
Related Topics
The Struggle for Benefits, Recognition, Naturalization, Why Should Americans Care?
HIGHLIGHT CLIPS
The Filipino veterans served to protect the United States and a lot of people don’t even know that. A lot of people in the Congress don’t know that!”
– (40:59) in full interview
We put the provision in the appropriations bill as a rider that granted the Naturalization for Filipino World War 2 veterans.”
– (12:13) in full interview
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Identical legislative bills that were introduced by both Congressman Mervyn Dymally (CA) and U.S. Senator Daniel K. Inouye (HI) that allowed for the naturalization of Filipino World War II veterans were made a part of the Immigration Act of 1990 (Section 405 of Public Law 101-649). In subsequent legislation, Senator Inouye placed a rider to an appropriations bill that allowed for the naturalization of Filipino Veterans of World War II to occur in the Philippines. This was done in an effort to alleviate the traveling hardships of the Filipino Veterans of World War II. Approximately, 25,000 veterans took advantage of the naturalization benefit.
That was the closest thing that Senator Inouye could make sure that The Filipino veterans of World War 2 got at least something.”
– (17:01) in full interview
It took so long to get recognized.”
– (35:29) in full interview
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It’s really the gratification of of trying to put something together, you know, on behalf of our Filipino veterans of World War II.”
– (43:39) in full interview
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FULL INTERVIEW
(35:29)
Filmed June 2019
This is a machine-generated transcript and may have errors.
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