RELEASED BY Vietnam Veterans of America:

CONTACT: Mokie Pratt Porter of Vietnam Veterans of America,
+1-301-585-4000, Ext. 146

WASHINGTON -- With less than two weeks remaining before Congress is scheduled to recess for the final campaigning before the elections in November, Vietnam Veterans of America urges the leadership of the House of Representatives to follow the lead of the Senate and pass the Senate version of the Filipino World War II Veterans Equity Act as part of the Veterans' Benefits Enhancement Act.

This bill would provide long-awaited redress for some 18,000 surviving Filipino veterans "who fought honorably and well as soldiers called to service by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as U.S. nationals while the Philippines was an American territory," said John Rowan, National President of VVA.

"It is because these veterans were denied their due for more than 60 years that VVA supports unequivocally and at long last the enactment of S. 1315," Rowan said.

Some have said that righting this wrong would make other American veterans lose some of their benefits. "To those who aver that passage of this provision would cut pension benefits for other elderly American veterans, we say this," Rowan said, "VVA will fully support and work tirelessly for an immediate, across-the-board increase for non-service-connected pension rates as well as a significant and much needed increase in Dependency & Indemnification Compensation rates as recommended by the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission.

"Now is not the time to pit one group of veterans against another," Rowan said. "Now is the time, finally, to provide redress for a historic wrong, for what has been, and remains, a dark blot on our history."

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