INQUIRER Global Nation

CALIFORNIA, United States?Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy, who died this week, was both unusual and typical as a ?Filipino.?

Unlike most Filipinos, he had a shock of white hair perched on top of an avuncular round face punctuated by a pair of gentle blue eyes and a toothy grin.

Like most Filipinos, he loved a good drink, great company and, like his older brothers, beautiful women. He was jovial, resilient, and unflinchingly optimistic; friends spoke fondly of his belly laugh, his fondness for singing, and his constancy in reminding others that ?the best days are still ahead.? This jolly nature, innate resilience, and unyielding optimism served him well and allowed him to survive dark days which saw his brothers felled by assassins? bullets.

The youngest in a brood of nine from a close-knit Catholic family, he was born in the same year as Ninoy Aquino (1932) and died in the same month as Cory Aquino (August 2009), the political couple he ardently supported while they were living in exile in his hometown of Boston during the cruel dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.

His Senate career spanned almost five decades?bracketed on both ends by the administrations of two charismatic young senators-turned-presidents in America (an Irish kuya and an Irish-Kenyan), and in the Philippines by two Macapagals, the younger of whom awarded him just recently with the highest possible presidential award for advancing the cause of Philippine democracy.

After an airplane accident which damaged his back, his gait would become unsteady, but not his distinctive voice. This voice was easily recognizable for its unmistakable Boston brogue, which he used to great effect in delivery booming and bombastic speeches.

Regarded early on as an intellectual lightweight and a dilettante compared to his driven and overachieving siblings, little was expected of him. But he would later prove his critics wrong, carrying the torch of a family legacy farther than anyone could even imagine.

Living and breathing his work, he was prolific as a legislator, authoring more than 2,500 bills and pushing hard for the successful passage of hundreds of bills into law, impacting millions of people in the process, both Democrats and Republicans.

He is owed by so many people, Filipinos and non-Filipinos alike, as direct beneficiaries of the impact of these laws. They include every disabled whose quality of life increased and for whom opportunities opened up as a result of the passage of Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which requires public facilities and employers to accommodate the needs of the disabled; every female on an athletic scholarship because of the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987, which protect women from discrimination in educational institutions around the country; every parent whose child participates in Head Start or is enjoying a state-sponsored health insurance because of the 1964 Employee Opportunity Act and the 1997 State Children?s Health Insurance Program; and every youngster who participated in any act of suffrage since the 70?s for his key sponsorship of the law that lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Largely because of his consistent, unflagging support, Filipino veterans, whether abroad or in the US, finally received some measure of their long-overdue recognition, and monetary compensation, for the military service they rendered during the Second World War with the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The list goes on and on and on?and it is no exaggeration. But nowhere is his impact bigger than in immigration for, truth be told, it can be legitimately argued that millions of Filipinos and their progeny owe their very presence in America to this legislative lion.

His involvement in immigration reform started in 1965, when, employing all the tools of political persuasion available to him, he lobbied for the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. The law abolished the national-origin quota system that was put in place by the Immigration Act of 1924, a system which, by limiting immigration from any country to 2 percent of the number of people from that country who were already living in the US according to the Census of 1890, ensured white immigration supremacy seemingly for eternity in the country.

Practically speaking, 2 percent of the 1890 Filipino population in the US meant zero Filipino immigration, this despite the fact that the Philippines was a decades-long member of the American Commonwealth and Filipinos were "nationals" and not aliens. Worse, the perpetuation of the 1924 system would have translated into the continued isolation of several thousands of Filipino soldiers and laborers recruited by the US government and American business interests to fight and serve during and in the immediate aftermaths of the First and Second World Wars.

Many of these Filipinos originally came to work the canneries of Alaska and the plantations of Central Valley. Most were poverty-stricken and open to abuse. As such, they were discriminated against freely, openly, and with impunity?and oftentimes treated worse than the African-Americans who spoke better English and were superior in number.

Because they were mostly male, these Filipinos, who would later in life come to be affectionately called manongs, had to live under a harsh legal climate. It was impossible to own real property or any business, live in a white neighborhood, or become a naturalized American citizen. For matters of the heart, unforgiving anti-miscegenation laws were the order of the day. And since they could not petition for their loved ones from the Philippines to join them in their new world, many grew old single, repairing their depression and aches by frequent visits to bars, gambling halls, and prostitutes. When some love-struck, stubborn Pinoys developed intimate relations with white women anyway, hate-filled riots broke out?the Watsonville ones in 1929 being the most well-known.

The 1965 Act was a true turning point in American history because it reformed the way immigrants were selected for admission to the country. The new law was now based on a preference system that gave priority to immigrants based on their skills and family relationships wherein every country in the Eastern hemisphere was given a quota of 20,000 but children under 21, spouses, and parents of US citizens were exempt from the quota. Next in the hierarchy was professionals, scientists, and artists "of exceptional ability," thus allowing Filipino doctors, nurses, and engineers to practice their craft in the land of milk and honey.

While most of the Filipino doctors who immigrated to America because of the work of Senator Kennedy registered as Republicans once they obtained their US citizenships, they should acknowledge their debt of gratitude to the liberal Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

To placate the concerns of a number of southern senators whose support was critical to the passage of the bill, Senator Kennedy assured them that ?the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.? He was mistaken of course and he was likely well aware that the country's ethnic mix would forever be changed because of this bill. Almost overnight, the Filipino population throughout the US surged with adobo cities like Daly City sprouting everywhere, with towns overwhelmingly populated by people with great belly laughs, people who love singing, a good drink, great company, and beautiful women. Thus, according to Simon Rosenberg of the New Democrat Network, the Act "set America on a very different demographic course than the previous 300 years."

But the senator's efforts to change US immigration laws did not stop in 1965. In 1986, he worked with President Ronald Reagan to provide amnesty to undocumented workers and impose stiffer sanctions for employers of undocumented workers. Then, he was at it again in 1990 as the lead sponsor of another immigration act which, among others, increased the quotas for family immigration and created a temporary safe haven program for persons fleeing oppressive governments; and in 1994 with the Violence Against Women Act, which allowed battered alien spouses to self-petition for permanent residence without the cooperation or sponsorship of their abusive US citizen husbands.

Like other great men, he was foolish too in many respects: His drinking was known to be excessive, his womanizing always a juicy subject of Washington gossip. His fault in the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident was ?indefensible? as he himself described it, and he had other character flaws. But as a legislator for all of his professional life, he should be judged based on his legislative record. The consensus of his colleagues, as expressed by President Obama, is that he was "the greatest US senator of the last 100 years."

As far as the Filipino community in the US is concerned, Senator Kennedy was our greatest advocate, and in many ways, our first Filipino US senator.