Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal Volume 7 Article 4 Number 2 Spring 2010 1-1-2010 We've Been Waiting a Long Time - The trS uggle to Pass the Filipino Veterans Equity Act and a Bittersweet Ending to a Sixty-Three-Year Battle Paul Daniel Rivera Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/ hastings_race_poverty_law_journal Part of the Law and Race Commons Recommended Citation Paul Daniel Rivera, We've Been Waiting a Long Time - The Struggle to Pass the Filipino Veterans Equity Act and a Bittersweet Ending to a Sixty-Three-Year Battle, 7 Hastings Race & Poverty L.J. 447 (2010). Available at: https://repository.uchastings.edu/hastings_race_poverty_law_journal/vol7/iss2/4 This Note is brought to you for free and open access by the Law Journals at UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal by an authorized editor of UC Hastings Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 'We've Been Waiting a Long Time' The Struggle to Pass the Filipino Veterans Equity Act and a Bittersweet Ending to a Sixty-Three-Year Battle BY PAUL DANIEL RIVERA* Introduction On February 17, 2009, President Barack Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.1 Widely known as the "Stimulus Bill," it was a 789 billion dollar response to the country's economic downturn that included a wide range of provisions for the funding of initiatives in education, health care, and infrastructure.2 Buried amidst the hundreds of pages and the billions of dollars funded by the bill was Title X, Section 1002 ("Section 1002"), a diminutive two pages of text authorizing the federal government to give "Payments to Eligible Persons Who Served in the United States Armed Forces in the Far East During World War 11.,, 3 It was an ambiguously sounding provision that may have had 4 no business being in an economic stimulus bill.