DRIVING OUT LEGAL IMMIGRANTS, CITIZENS, AND VETERANS

A Personal Account:

On my most recent visit to the Philippines, I became acquainted with an elderly gentleman, 80+ years of age, a native born Filipino who became an American Citizen. He was born in a Philippines which at that time was a Protectorate, or Territory, of the United States. At the time of the Japanese invasion during World War II, he was a soldier in the U.S. Army, Department of the Philippines. After the invasion, having escaped capture by the Japanese, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, to serve the United States and to liberate his native Philippines from Japan. Subsequently, after the end of the war, he was able to immigrate to America, and eventually become an American Citizen.

He related to me that he and his family had settled in a Seattle neighborhood in the early 1960’s. They were happy and strove to assimilate into mainstream American culture, he was able to land a good job with a railroad company and worked long enough to earn a good retirement.

But he and his wife choose to leave the U.S. a few years ago, not out of any great desire to live in the Philippines away from their family that was well established in America, but because of what they saw happening to American Culture. The change that prompted this move? The neighborhood they lived in had become overrun with Latino’s, mostly Mexican and mostly illegal This once peaceful neighborhood became a haven of gang activity, overcrowded “boarding housesâ€