National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my amendment, which would correct a decades-long gap in VA's Allied Beneficiary Program by extending this program to South Korean veterans now living in the United States who served alongside the United States during the Vietnam war.

For 63 years, veterans of allied forces from World Wars I and II have been able to enroll in VA healthcare. The U.K., Australia, France, New Zealand, and Canada have had reciprocal agreements with the United States, reimbursing the VA for care provided to their veterans and vice versa.

In the 1970s, Congress also made veterans of the Czech and Polish Armed Forces who have been American citizens for at least 10 years eligible for VA healthcare. However, neither the Czech Republic nor Poland have reciprocal agreements with the United States, so VA is not reimbursed for the care provided to these veterans.

Yet still today, veterans of the Republic of Korea who fought alongside us in the Vietnam war and then went on to become citizens of the United States are denied what their European counterparts already have: access to veteran-centric, high-quality care from VA.

Over 300,000 Koreans fought alongside the United States in Vietnam. Thousands went on to build lives here and become citizens, but today only 300 of these veterans are still living.

However, despite their service as our allies in the Korean military, these Korean Americans are not recognized as U.S. veterans in theory or in title and are therefore not granted access to VA services under the law. They are also not covered by the Korean healthcare system while living here in the United States.

Once they are naturalized United States citizens, they are recognized by South Korea as foreign nationals, with no benefits available to them in the United States. This is the decades-long inequity that this amendment would seek to address. This amendment is about supporting naturalized United States citizens as much as it is about sending a clear message to our allies abroad: If you serve alongside us in times of war, we will have your back.

This is important not only to provide vital healthcare to veterans here in the United States but also to instill confidence in our country as an international partner and ally. Three hundred Korean Vietnam veterans, now Americans, are asking this country to respect their service as fully as we respect the service of our European allies.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend, the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, implying that he would be supportive of this if we included other categories and other cohorts of veterans in a similar place. I go along with that.

I would be willing to work with the ranking member to address these other cohorts because I believe that we need to extend this particular offer to these others, but there is no reason for us not to act on this particular amendment because we have these 300 now-naturalized Korean- American citizens who served with us in the Vietnam war who have critical health needs.

Let us take care of these veterans now, but I pledge to work with the ranking member to address the other categories of naturalized American citizens who have served in a similar vein as our Czech Americans, our Polish Americans, and all of our other American allies.

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Mr. TAKANO. Mr. Speaker, again, I just urge that all Members of Congress support this amendment. The ranking member and I can work on the other classifications, other classes of veterans.

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