Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Floor Speech
ASIAN PACIFIC HERITAGE MONTH -- (House of Representatives - May 07, 2007)
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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my fellow Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, CAPAC members, and my other colleagues in celebrating Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
I'd like to, of course, thank Congressman Honda for organizing this special order tonight, and for his leadership shown throughout the year in his service as chairman of CAPAC.
The heritage month theme is ``Meeting the Challenges for Asian Pacific Americans.'' The APA community has come a long way since the days when laws excluded us from coming to this country, barred us from many places, public places, and worse, interned us in camps solely because of our ethnic heritage.
Nationwide, we are now 14 million strong, and in the next 30 years the APA population is expected to double to about 8 percent of the entire U.S. population.
Because of our history of labor immigration and our indigenous island population, Hawaii has had a head start in terms of political representation. Our APA communities have lived and worked in our islands since the mid-1800s, when the first Chinese laborers were imported to work in the sugarcane fields. Since 2000, three of our communities, the Okinawans, Koreans, and the Filipinos, have celebrated their centennial anniversaries of arrival to the United States and to Hawaii.
Hawaii produced the first Governors in the Nation of Japanese and Filipino ancestry, George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano; the first Native Hawaiian Governor, John Waihee; the first Asian American Senators, Hiram Fong and Daniel Inouye; the first Senator of Native Hawaiian ancestry, Daniel Akaka; the first Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Member of Congress, Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole; and the first woman of color to serve in Congress, Patsy Takemoto Mink. And I am privileged to have served as Hawaii's Lieutenant Governor, becoming the first immigrant woman of Asian ancestry elected to statewide office and to be able to continue my service here as the first immigrant born in Japan serving in Congress.
Asian and Pacific Islander Members of Congress currently number only nine, including Eni Faleomavaega, our delegate from American Samoa. Also with me in the House are Congress Members Mike Honda and Doris Matsui, Oregon's David Wu, Virginia's Robert Scott, and Louisiana's Bobby Jindals. In the Senate we have Hawaii's two senior statesmen, Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka.
Although the successes of our APA community over the years have been many, there is another side to our story that is not often discussed. While more Asians have college degrees than any other group in the country, we also have more people who have not graduated from high school compared with other ethnic groups. And while APAs have higher incomes, the U.S. Census counts 1.3 million Asian and Pacific Islanders living in poverty. There are still many wrongs to be righted. Some of them are decades old.
On March 1, 2007, I reintroduced the Filipino Veterans Family Reunification Act, H.R. 1287, a companion bill to S. 671, introduced by Senator Akaka. It will accelerate the immigration process for the sons and daughters of the Filipino veterans who fought with our American troops in World War II. I am also a cosponsor of the Filipino Veterans Equity Act, H.R. 760, to fulfill our promise of full veterans' benefits to those Filipino soldiers.
I know that questions have been raised about the cost of carrying out our obligation to the Filipino World War II veterans. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cost of enacting H.R. 760 will be $1 billion over a 10-year period. While this is a large sum, it is worth noting that the United States spends approximately $9 billion each month in the war in Iraq.
Challenges are also facing our Native Hawaiian population. The desire for self-determination by the indigenous people of my home State has been ignored for far too long by the Federal Government. Native Hawaiians remain the only indigenous group in our country still awaiting Federal recognition similar to the recognition Congress has granted to American Indians and Alaska Natives. H.R. 505, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, would set up a process for Native Hawaiians to organize a government entity.
By continuing to work together, I am hopeful that we will be able to meet these challenges as we have overcome others in the past. This month Washington, D.C. is hosting the Eighth Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders, PICL. The triennial PICL brings together the heads of government and senior officials from the Pacific, including Hawaii and the U.S. Pacific Territories. This is the first time that the group has met in Washington, D.C., and it is quite an opportunity for all of us here to find common ground on issues facing the Pacific region and our world.
In closing, I would again like to thank Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chairman Honda for allowing us this opportunity to reflect upon how far our APA community has come and yet, of course, remember how much further our community has to go.
Mahalo and aloha.
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