A Petition to Bring America’s Forgotten Children Home

Today, at least 50,000 Americans -- and possibly as many as 250,000 -- are stranded in the Philippines, separated from their relatives and their fatherland. These children were fathered by U.S. servicemen stationed in or visiting the Philippines. Throughout their lives, they have suffered discrimination and poverty. Yet to this day, they remain forgotten by the governments of the Philippines and the United States. (For more information, please read an op-ed published last May in the New York Times by a Yale law student at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/opinion/the-forgotten-amerasians.html?_r=0

In 1982, the Congress of the United States passed Public Law 97-359 (known as the Amerasian Act), which permitted Amerasians born in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, South Korea, and Thailand to immigrate to the United States under special immigration preferences. The Philippines had been included originally but were excluded when the law was passed. Is a child fathered by a U.S. citizen with a woman from the Philippines any less deserving of U.S. citizenship than a child fathered by a U.S. citizen in Thailand,Vietnam,Korea,Laos or Cambodia?

Now that the Philippines and the U.S. have signed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), U.S. servicemen are poised to return to the Philippines in large numbers, and a new generation of Amerasians will be born.

I ask the U.S. Congress and House of Representatives to draft legislation to amend the Amerasian Act to include Amerasians from the Philippines. Over two decades have passed since Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Base were closed, but the U.S. government has yet to recognize Filipino Amerasians, the forgotten children of America. It is time that we bring them home.

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