THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES, 1898-1946 The Americans killed more than half of the population of the Philippines between 1898 and 1915. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) The United States bought the Philippines from Spain for $20,000.00, including its native human inhabitants through the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898 that was ratified by the U.S. Congress on April 11, 1899. For 48 years, the official title of the Philippines was “United States of America, Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands.” Under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment, all persons born in the United States, subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. Since the Filipinos were born in the “United States of America, Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands”, it follows that all Filipinos born during the territorial period were citizens of the United States of America. Earlier, more or less 20 decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States stated that “Filipinos are not aliens in the United States.” One of the them was the case of Alfafara Vs. Fross. How ever, and because of the prevailing racist attitude in America at that time which considered Filipinos “brown Niggers” that could be a cancer to the American body politic, the United States Supreme Court invented the term “United States Nationals” with regard to the Filipinos U.S. citizens in the Philippines. This judicially-created status was not, and still cannot be, found in the U.S. Constitution. But it was invented to accommodate the Filipinos who could not also be classified as aliens because they were born in a United States territory, like Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands and Saipan. Prior to the classification of Filipinos as “American Nationals”, an 1857 7-to-2 decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Dred Scott Vs. Sanford, stated that the Negroes or Blacks in America, even if free, were not American citizens and, as such, they were like chattels. It was in the midst of this racist environment that the Filipinos were also considered a cancer to the American body politic by Senator Elihu Root and, as such, while not aliens in the United States, were not also full-fledged American citizens. This white American racial prejudice against colored people reared its monstrous head in the Philippines between 1898 and 1916 when, according to Mark Twain --- Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910) --- the United States massacred more than half of the population in the Philippines. (See photos from pages 136 to 148 infra.) The white-dominated American occupation army, for instance, wiped out nearly all of the inhabitants of Samar as a retaliatory measure against killing of American soldiers at Balangiga, Samar Island. Although only persons above the age of ten (10) were supposed to be killed, there was no way of finding out how old the Filipinos were before killing them. The white American killing spree of Filipinos was the first American-sponsored holocaust in Asia before the American extermination of the Japanese inhabitants of Nagasaki and Heroshima, and the American genocide of the Vietnamese People in the 1960s. However, and probably because the Filipinos had already been programmed by the Spaniards to live, feel, and act as slaves for 350 years, the Filipinos eventually embraced the American way of life before and after the Japanese occupation. Besides, unlike the Spaniards, the Americans immediately taught the Filipinos how to read, write and speak English so much so that, to date, this country is the second largest English-speaking country in the world. Subsequently, the Filipinos fought for the United States and the American People in a thousand battlefields, particularly in Bataan and Corrigidor. In the process, roughly two million Filipino lives and properties were either lost or damaged during the Second World War. More than that, thousands of Filipinos fought and died for America in the cold lands of Korea; stood for America in the forbidding jungles of Vietnam; and shed blood for America in other parts of the world. But when the cannons of war were silenced by treaties of peace, and after the dead were buried, the American forces abandoned the Philippines instead of rebuilding Manila which was the second most war-damaged city in the world. Instead, the ungrateful Americans went to Japan and rebuild the economy of the enemy. Worse, after the Filipinos were legislatively reclassified from being American nationals (U.S. citizens) to aliens, the American People granted automatic visas to their former enemies like the Japanese, Italians and Germans but denied the same privilege to the Filipino People. How the American People gave more favors to those who captured, tortured and killed their fighting men and women in war but denied the same favor to those who died (by the hundreds of thousands) for them is still difficult to comprehend, unless it can be established that the white Americans are in fact, and in reality, not truly human beings at all. Today, there are thousands --- perhaps, close to half a million--- former American nationals (or citizens) who are considered illegal aliens in the United States. But the current breed of Filipino leaders are too corrupt to even think of the welfare of Filipinos who have been torn from the embrace of their families in the process of work ing as economic slaves in foreign lands. On the other hand, what ought not to be forgotten are the half-Americans (Amerasians) in the Philippines. Unlike the half-Americans in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and Japan, who are now in the United States, Filipino half-Americans are still in the Philippines, neglected and forgotten. Looking back, I am tempted to think that there is something in the Filipino that the white Americans do not like to see. Why did McArthur, the liberator of the Philippines, abandon the Filipinos and rebuild the land of the enemy in the aftermath of the Second World War? Why were the Amerasians in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Japan given preferential treatment in the implementation of the Amerasian Law of the early 1980s? What was in the minds of the white Americans when they tortured and exterminated more than half of the population in the Philippines? Why were the Cubans not treated as badly was the Filipinos? And, of all, American nationals or citizens, why were the Filipinos the only ones stripped of their United States citizenship or birthright? Had the Filipinos been white, would the white Americans have committed the congressional or legislative genocide of a whole race of Brown People? When I was in the United States, for nearly three decades, I filed a lawsuit against the United States seeking reinstatement of the American citizenship of the Filipino People through the case of Summerfield Vs. INS with the 9th Federal Circuit Court of Appeals wherein Judge Harry Pregerson, chief of a 3-man judicial division, ruled that Filipinos born during the territorial period or commonwealth era were (and still are) citizens of the America. But, unfortunately, the two members of his panel --- a Chinese American and a Mexican American --- decided along racial lines. Even the manner with which the decision was published was also racially done. Actually, there was another case, Rabang Vs. INS, filed by a white American lawyer named Ron T. Oldenburg, raising the same issue. The Court ordered that I argue and present Summerfield’s case in tandem with Oldenburg. However, when the decision was made in 1994, its main text was published under the case of this white lawyer, obviously with the intent to prevent any credit to be openly associated with me. Yet, I took this apparently routine discriminatory treatment in stride. When I moved to New York City in the early 1990s, I again raised the same issue in the case of Valmonte Vs. INS (Case No. 96-4194) but the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals simply adopted the decision in the case of Summferfield Vs. INS. Subsequently, I raised the matter to the Supreme Court of the United States via a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari in the hope that the same Supreme Court had already recovered from the racial virus that was behind the decision in the case of Dred Scott Vs. Sanford wherein the Negroes were declared to noncitizens but chattels of their slave owners. This time, I neither won nor lost. But, to all intents and purposes, I did. I lost because the Supreme Court did not make any decision at all. It simply refused to face question as to whether the Filipinos, who were born in the “United States of America, Philippine Islands” were in fact American citizens. Looking back, by way of hindsight, I think it was because the members of the U.S. Supreme Court knew that Filipinos truly fall under Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment declaring all those born in the “United States” or any territory thereof (like Washington, DC) as American citizens. Once acquired, no one --- no U.S. President, Congress or Court --- can take it away because the CITIZEN is above the American three branches of government. On the other hand, the predominantly white members of the U.S. Supreme Court must have feared that, if they rule on the case that I raised, the “floodgate theory” would be set into motion; meaning, most of the Filipinos (“Brown Niggers”) would enter the United States, adding “Brown” to the “Black” problem. Undaunted, I filed another case in New Jersey and, when I lost, I went back to the Supreme Court for the second time but lost again. By and large, there are still ten (10) other circuits in the United States where the same issue can be raised. That is why I wrote a book, American Birthright On Trial, in the hope that a young Filipino lawyer would take the cudgels for me and the Filipino People. Face with what I perceived to be a racist, white dominated judiciary, I befriend U.S. Congressman Benjamin Gilman of Rockland, New York, who was then the Chairman of the U.S. Lower House International Relations Committee. Gilman agreed to conduct a series of congressional hearings on the issue but lack of cooperation from the Filipino communities in America, especially the lawyers, consigned the plan to memory. Recently, someone from abroad wrote me a letter saying that several U.S. Congressmen are willing to file a bill seeking the reinstatement of the U.S. citizenship of the Filipino People. The writer of the letter said that, for the bill to have a justification, the Filipinos must go to the streets and show their desire to reclaim their lost American citizenship. Consequently, I organized the FILIPINO CRUSADE FOR THE REINSTATEMENT OF AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP (FILCRAC) and started to conduct a nationwide referendum asking the Filipinos whether they want to have dual Filipino-American citizenship. That national referendum is still going on. But, to a distressingly large extent, I am NOT thus far satisfied with the reaction of those who are aware of the process.
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 08:06:07 +0000
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