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For the past 17 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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30 dead, 7 missing in storm
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Residents are ferried through waist-deep floodwaters
on a road in Manila. (MNSwirephotos)
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SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga, Aug. 26, 2004 --- Continuous heavy rains swept across wide parts of Manila and Northern Luzon on Wednesday, leaving at least 247 barangays in different areas are flooded.
In Pampanga, a three-year-old boy in Candaba town drowned, while in Tarlac, at least 2,607 residents were forced to flee their flooded homes.
In Bulacan, Roel Agustin, of the provincial disaster coordinating council, cited initial reports that heavy flooding has destroyed about 554 hectares of ricelands in nine of 10 towns where floodwaters continued to swell as of afternoon yesterday amid continuing heavy rains.
Hundreds of commuters were stranded in Carranglan, Nueva Ecija after the highway was cut by heavy landslides the other night.
At least 3,000 pieces of bread and six boxes of sardines were brought to the site for the stranded commuters even as government engineers began clearing the road of debris.
“The weather is really fearsome. The heavy drops of rain are even swirling,” said Evelyn Manalo, regional spokesman of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has dispatched two dump trucks loaded with hundreds of sandbags to Barangay Mandasig in Candaba, Pampanga.
Two rescue teams from the Army’s 7th Infantry Battalion under the Northern Luzon Command arrived with two rescue vehicles and two rubber boats for emergency use.
Chief Superintendent Vidal Querol, Central Luzon police director, said 15 of Pampanga’s 22 towns are flooded.
Hardest-hit are the towns of Guagua where all 23 barangays are flooded; Macabebe with 19; Masantol with 17; Lubao and Sasmuan, both with 12.
Meanwhile, more than a hundred low-lying villages in La Union and Pangasinan are also flooded, some of them about waist-deep.
Floodwaters in Pangasinan rose by several feet after excess water was released from the Binga and Ambuklao dams.
Heavy rains also swelled rivers and flooded major roads in Benguet, where authorities have alerted villagers about possible landslides.
After the storm
Thirty people have been reported killed and seven others missing as heavy rains caused by typhoon Aere and super-typhoon Chaba triggered floods, a landslide and a road crash in the Philippines.
A landslide buried at least one house in the town of San Mateo, Rizal, leaving a four year-old boy missing, the Civil Defense Office (CDO) said. Two people are unaccounted for hours after they fell into a swollen creek in Quezon City.
In the northern town of Magsingal, a car smashed into a bus after losing traction on a rain-slicked highway, police said.
The car’s driver and his three companions were killed, while eight bus passengers were hurt.
Parts of Manila were under up to three feet of water, paralyzing traffic and forcing many schools to declare holidays, officials said.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo cancelled a planned town hall meeting and ordered all government offices except for emergency services to close for the day after she inspected flood-control projects in the capital.
Military trucks deployed to pick up stranded commuters, while rubber boats and helicopters were sent to areas that could not be reached by road vehicles, the civil defense office said.
The weather bureau said Aere and Chaba, both churning off the northeast coast of Luzon, worsened the seasonal southwest monsoons. —- with reports from Philstar news and MNS.
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Court sentenced her to 4 yrs .and 6 mos. jail term
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CHICAGO, Illinois, August 26, 2004 --- A Filipino-American woman celebrated on Thursday a gloomy birthday as she was found guilty of embezzlement.
Fe Fabunan, a divorcee who just turned 52, went straight to the Cook County jail after Judge James B. Linn ordered her to start serving out her 54 months in prison for scamming about $585,000 from her former employer, WTTW-Channel 11, a public television.
Except for her lawyer, Thomas J. Tyrrell, and a couple, who appears to be her relatives, nobody else was there to extend her a moral support.
When asked to comment on her sentence, Fabunan, while sitting in a court room as she awaited her case to be taken up by the judge, meekly covered her face with the papers in her hands without speaking a word.
Free on a $300,000 bond, Fabunan, a resident of Huntley, Illinois, 50 miles northwest of Chicago, was wearing pink shirt and blue jeans and was holding a small black bag as she was led away by County sheriffs.
After she pleaded guilty last July 27, Judge Linn agreed to sentence her 4years in prison on condition that she turns in her entire $370,000 worth of 401(k) plan, an employer-sponsored retirement plan.
Her arrest report simply listing Philippines as her birthplace.
Cook County Assistant State Attorney Bill Merritt of the Government and Financial Crimes Unit said Fabunan is going to get a 34-day time off from her sentence as she was in jail while her bond was being processed.
Court records showed that between July 1999 and January 2003, Fabunan, working as the station’s accounts-payable manager, repeatedly tricked company officials into believing they owed money to certain vendors.
After issuing checks for those vendors and having her bosses approve them, Fabunan replaced the vendors’ names with her name on the computer-generated checks, and deposited the money into her personal account.
Her fraudulent act was detected after Fabunan retired in December 2002. She mistakenly paid herself money owed to a vendor.
Had she sought trial, Fabunan could have faced a maximum of 15 years of jail time.
She was originally charged with two counts of theft and deception for the amount of more than $100,000; one count of theft and unauthorized control for the amount of more than $100,000; two counts of theft and deception for the amount of more than $300 and less than $10,000; one count of forgery/make and alteration of document; and two counts of forgery, issue, and delivery of document.
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JERSEY CITY, Aug. 26, 2004 --- When Kevin Towell flew to the U.S. last week to look for his American father, he was disappointed. His father, a former G.I. stationed at the Subic Base, Philippines, his refused to help him.
Through the help of Philippine Children’s Fund (PCF), Towell, 21, realized his dream of flying to America. But without other family in the U.S., he is now homeless and desperate.
His mother was a former bar worker who had an affair with the former American G.I. He found out that his father had his own children and family in California.
Towell, one of the 50,000 Amerasian children born out of relationships between American military servicemen or personnel and Filipino women, now lives at the PCF House in Sacramento, Calif.
PCF is trying to help him by providing him job training, so he could start a new life in California.
When the U.S. bases closed down in 1993, American G.I.s left thousands of fatherless children mostly living in poverty and deprivation in the Philippines.
“Right now, 18 more Amerasians are scheduled to fly from the Philippines. We want to give them job training and comprehensive program so they could start a life here,” said Erik Gomez, founder and director of PCF.
Gomez said they are only bringing Amerasians who were granted immigrant visas by the U.S. embassy. He said these Amerasians were so poor and couldn’t afford to buy plane tickets to the U.S. But if these Amerasians stay in the Philippines, they will continue to face the reality of discrimination and life of destituteness in their homeland.
“They are also Americans. We help them be reunited with their fathers," said Gomez.
During donors’ night, some Filipino-Americans came to contribute for PCF, an organization that seeks more donors to help educate and feed poor Filipino children in the Philippines. It is also developing a 50-acre facility at the former U.S. Air Force in Clark to be made into children’s ranch and environment sanctuary.
Founded in 1991 in San Francisco, Calif, PCF matches generous donors from the U.S. with needy Filipino children to support their educational and other needs.
It’s initial mission was to serve the white, black and Hispanic and other Amerasian children left behind from the closure of U.S. military bases in the Philippines.
“The tag put on these children left many on the streets to collect garbage, beg and even prostitute themselves to get by. The generosity of individuals allows us to serve other children, families and communities all over the Philippines,” PCF said.
PCF in its logo promotes “sharing, educating, feeding, healing, loving and caring” for disadvantaged Filipino children.
“I was compelled to help PCF because I knew the problems of Amerasians. I was asssigned to work in Clark before. Nobody was helping the Amerasians. It’s really a big problem. We have to take care of these kids," said Joe Tabaco, Filipino-American and a donor from Long Island, NY who attended the PCF donors’ night last Friday night.
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Sitting on a couch in his New York apartment one Saturday evening, Alex, a 29-year-old straight-talking marketing assistant, showed sadness and frustration as he discussed how his hopes to get his green card turned bleak after he was tested positive for H.I.V.
The day he got the result of his medical examination, he said, seemed like “two deadly lightning” that struck him at the same time. He knew he has to live with H.I.V. all his life, and it was the start of an uphill battle to get his U.S. permanent residency status.
Afraid to admit to his family that he is a homosexual man, and living with H.I.V. for two years, Alex, who asked to conceal his last name because only a few close friends know about his H.I.V. status, feels he has nowhere to go.
“Until this time, I’m in an extremely small deadbolt-locked room. If I will go back to my home country, I’m not sure if I would get the proper healthcare that I need,” he said. “And I don’t know either what’s going to happen with me if I stay in the U.S.”
As lawmakers still are reeling over the issues of same-sex marriage, the case of Alex, a Chinese who lives with his American partner in the upper east side of Manhattan and currently holds a non-immigrant work visa, infected through a number of previous man-to-man sexual affairs, echoes the crucial link between H.I.V. and a green card.
The Immigration and Nationality Act, in Section 212 (a)(1), rules that any applicant found to be infected with a communicable disease of public health significance could be denied either a non-immigrant (temporary) visa or an immigrant visa (green card).
“H.I.V. is a ground of inadmissibility because it is considered to be a communicable disease of public health significance,” said Cyrus D. Mehta, an immigration lawyer and secretary of the New York Bar Association. “Any applicants infected with H.I.V. must have to obtain a waiver against the ban.”
In order to qualify for a waiver, under the U.S. immigration law, one way for the HIV--positive applicant is to establish an immediate family relationship, he said. This person must be a spouse or unmarried son or daughter, or a minor unmarried adopted child of a U.S. citizen or green card holder, or have a son or daughter who is a U.S. citizen or green card holder.
Another way to get a waiver, Mehta said, is to have a [private] health insurance, be treated by a physician and must also establish that he or she will [not] become a public charge.
“It is impossible to get a waiver if the applicant with H.I.V. doesn’t have a private health insurance. Generally that’s what the USCIS requires.”
Health studies have documented that immigrants are among the millions of people who have no private health insurance in the country today. This could be attibuted to low income and absence of legal documents to stay in the country.
But even the applicant tested positive for H.I.V. is able to obtain private insurance, nevertheless, the burden of public charge ground does not end there. The applicant must be able to show proof or work or will work or has an affidavit of support submitted on his or her behalf, Mehta said. If the applicant has ever received ADAP or any other state or federal subsidy, it is important that the applicant should not be receiving such public assistance at the time of the interview.
Mehta, a graduate of Cambridge University and Columbia Law School who have given lectures on the intricacy of H.I.V. and immigration issues in legal workshops, seminars and universities, said the qualification for a waiver is apparently more difficult for homosexuals.
“Gays and lesbians are most likely unable to establish a legally cognizable marriage under the law. They are also less likely to have other close family members in the U.S. as they may have come to the U.S. to escape being shunned or ostracized by these very family member in their own countries,” he said.
As for Alex, neither of his family members nor immediate relatives are U.S. citizens. He also doesn’t have a health insurance.
In New York City, H.I.V./AIDS cases in ethnic communities have dramatically increased over the recent years. Chinese ranked first, followed by Filipinos, Southeast Asian Indians and Japanese, respectively. Although ranked 8th, South Koreans in the city are believed to have a higher number of cases than what had been reported as most of Korean homosexuals are “closeted.” (New York Department of Health, March 2002).
This confirms reports that cases of green card applicants living with H.I.V. have also gone up.
“I have come across these type of cases all the time, especially among interracial homosexual couples,” Mehta said. “Some of them only learned that they are infected with H.I.V. when they applied for a green card.”
Stigma and taboos
A study of the Asian and Pacific Islander Coalition on H.I.V./AIDS (APICHA) said that misconceptions, taboos and outright homophobia have fostered denial among a broader population of gay Asian and Pacific Islanders.
“Within the API community, it is not common for most parents to discuss sex in the family. How much more homosexuality — and H.I.V. and AIDS? It sounds very scary to them,” Bric Bernas, program manager of APICHA, said in previous interviews.
APICHA, a New York-based leading H.I.V./AIDS service groups providing research, testing and counselling to the API community, said that amid the massive efforts in establishing more testing sites in New York, just like any other states in the country, to make it more accessible to people, as well as introducing more convenient methods of testing such as the rapid test that can be done at home as easy and safe as a pregnancy test, there is a potentially more serious problems when the target respondent is deeply stigmatized by cultural norms and religious beliefs.
“Negative feelings against homosexuality have resulted in hesitation to visit testing sites. It’s difficult to convince people to get tested when they fear what others may say,” Tooru Nemoto, assistant professor of the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at University of California in San Francisco (UCSF), said earlier in a phone interview. “The social pressure and discriminatory perception against homosexuality has a major drawback in ethnic communities.”
Nemoto said the reported number of H.I.V. and AIDS cases among immigrants is actually a “tip of the iceberg” if to consider tens of thousands of untested HIVers.
A ray of hope
Citing equal rights, advocacy groups are pushing for ammendment of the laws affecting homosexual and transgender community.
If an applicant with H.I.V. does not qualify for a waiver under current family and health insurance grounds, advocates said, the waiver provisions should be expanded. Otherwise many affected individuals may end up breaking immigration laws.
“Unless same-sex marriage will be legalized, many applicants infected with H.I.V., like anyone who doesn’t have the visa to stay longer in the country, will live an underground life,” said Arthur Zabenko, an immigration lawyer based in New Jersey.
Since public health is a major issue of immigration, said Zabenko, it is important for policymakers to broaden laws on same-sex marriages, which would allow more deserving people clearly eligible for a green card.
To date, a legislation known as the Permanent Partners Immigration Act (PPIA) has been proposed by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY).
Under PPIA, the “permanent partners” will be recognized and added to the usual family members — spouse, child and parent — who can sponsor relatives or provide the basis for H.I.V. and other waivers.
The PPIA defines a permanent partner as “an individual over 18 years of age who is in a committed, intimate relationship with another unmarried individual over 18 years of age in which both parties intend a lifelong commitment; is financially interdependent with that other individual; is not married to or in a permanent partnership with anyone other than that individual; and is unable to contract with that other individual a marriage cognizable under the INA; and is not a first, second or third blood relation of that other individual.”
Claiming that several other countries have recognized the ability of a same sex partner to serve as a family member for immigration benefits, Mehta, in one of his articles posted on his Web site, said: “It is high time that the U.S., a nation of immigrants, adopt more progressive laws that would make it easier for persons infected with H.I.V. to obtain waivers.
While the PPIA has a long way to go before it becomes law, over 70 Congresspersons have indicated that they will support this legislation. Only effective and persistent advocacy will ensure that the PPIA some day gets a majority of votes in Congress.”
“I hope there’s hope,” he said.
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