Reverend Keane's Excerpt from the 1981 Congressional Hearing for Immigration Reform

Reverend Keane's Excerpt from the 1981 Congressional Hearing for Immigration Reform

An excerpt from Reverend Keane who spoke in favor for H.R. 808 and the modification of the Immigration Act of 1965 to further support the children of American servicemen who had been all but abandoned. Taken from Page 147 of the 1981 Congressional Hearing for Immigration Reform.

Committee on the Judiciary, Congress.

"Immigration Reform, Part 2"
Hearing ID: HRG-1981-HJH-0026

Hearing Date: Nov. 12, 17, 19, 1981

English

"This is the point I wish to emphasize today. An Amerasian is an American as well as an Asian. For over 40 years we have known them only as Asians, but we never admitted that they are Americans as well. Their fathers knew them, those who servered our country in Asia knew them to be Americans because we saw them with their own eyes. Many even knew their fathers. But it did not take long for even these people to forget. Some wanted to forget, some just wanted to put the war they were sent to fight behind them. Included in their forgetting were the American children who had been brought into the world by American fathers. What is an Amerasian? He is a child forgotten and abandoned by his father and teh country that sent his father to Asia. They have become during the last 40 years the forgotten children of America.
In Asia, children belong to the father. A child is from the father. It is from the father that the child receives his/her name, nationality, ancestry, clan, and family relationships - all of which determine schooling, marriage, and obtaining a job and social position in Southeast Asia. For the Amerasian, those forgotten American children of Asia, life is just misery - a tragedy that is full of misery.