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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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PERHAPS inebriated by the record dollar remittances from overseas Filipinos, President Gloria Arroyo, in her speech before the 10th National Convention of Government Employees, asked officials of state colleges and unversities to “tweak the school curriculum” to prepare their students to become better overseas workers.
So this is all what Mrs. Arroyo wants after all: a nation of OFWs. For all the technocratic mumbo-jumbo of her medium-term, long-term or whatever-term development plan of her administration, her plan for recovery boils down to exporting more of our labor force, to sending more of our productive workers abroad.
Allow us to point out that there is nothing wrong with being an overseas Filipino worker. We do not begrudge our fellow Filipinos for leaving the country in search of the proverbial “greener pasture”.
But we are sure that if the same career and earning opportunities were available at home, there would be no need for our doctors, nurses, engineers, teachers, accountants, blue- collar workers and domestic workers to cross the ocean and be away from their families for months or years just so they could eke a decent living.
The export of labor began in the 70s when the martial law government of then-President Marcos could not provide enough jobs for the people. This ‘Filipino diaspora’ is actually an anomalous offshoot of a bankrupt and mismanaged economy.
But rather than solve the root causes of the labor exodus, what Mrs. Arroyo wants to do is to exacerbate the problematic situation. Rather than fix the economy and create more jobs, she wants Philippine schools to churn out more OFWs.
Rather than intensify the sending out of OFWs, it would have made more sense if she focused on jumpstarting the moribund economy and creating job opportunities in the home country.
Since the 70s, dollar remittances from OFWs are the only thing that is keeping the economy afloat. But relying on the remittances is just a stopgap solution. In the long run, it will not help the country achieve genuine economic development.
Remember that labor export has its dark side. It robs the country of the necessary brains and brawns needed to propel our own drive for progress. That’s why when this phenomenon first came to be, it was called “brain drain”.
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NEW YORK --- Today is the 342nd day of 2005; there are 23 days left in the year. As I write this column, I feel as if I want to turn back the hands of time if only to recall the good old days of yesteryears like when my grandmother was born some 105 years ago on this day.
Had she been alive, Lola Cion would have celebrated her birthday with her grandchildren gathered around a piano. While she plays her favorite waltz piece, we – the children of her children – gleefully tease her to play another one, and another, until she realizes it was time to tuck us to bed with layers of blanket and kiss us goodnight.
That was many years ago in a little town in Baguio City where we used to spend our Christmas holiday when we were kids; a time when the scent of fresh pine trees was all over the place and the cold breeze of air was like late autumn in New York.
She used to tell us stories of how she and grandpa survived the Japanese Occupation Forces which invaded the Philippines in 1941, 64 years ago.
This was right after they attacked American and British territories and possessions in the Pacific, including the home base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7.
This was the time when two of her brothers-in-law joined the guerilla forces to fight the invaders only to perish in the battlefield. They, together with many others, were convinced by President Roosevelt proclamation to join with American forces to fend off the Japanese army.
War, she said then, is a terrible experience – the victors are the ones that survive and the losers are those that are left with nothing: No parent, spouse, sibling or home to go back to. There are painful memories, she said, which are better left in the deep recesses of the brain.
According to Lola Cion, food was an important element of life but the thought of survival was first in the minds of those left behind during the war. There were times when they had to contend with only water, rice and plant leaves to survive.
Lola Cion was a schoolteacher; one of the few, good ones, I must say, that was a product of the Thomasites, the early American teachers that came to the Philippines before the war broke out. In the Dona Aurora Hill Elementary School where she taught, she was well-loved not only by her students but also by her peers.
It was through her constant reminders that we learned lessons about keeping our faith in God; the value of a good, solid education; the importance of good manners and conduct; and the significance of success.
As I look back to the earlier years I spent with her and my cousins in Baguio City, I wish she was still around to tell stories to my children as she did to us. But time seems short lived with more memories to recall; in a few days, a new year comes. It is like a new leaf, a new page, a new season, and a new moment in our life.
But between reluctantly anticipating a new year and remembering someone’s lifetime, I’m feeling trapped in a time capsule, uncertain of where I am at the moment, unwilling to let go as if bound by time.
Is it the nostalgia of the past that’s pulling me back or the reality of the present that’s moving me toward the future? How has time transformed us not only physically but also in our frame of mind? How has it affected our quest to accomplish our goals, the changes in our environment or perhaps changes in weather conditions?
With temperature dipping into the low teens, today is also the coldest day of the week and on Friday, Dec. 9, a 5 to 8 inches of snow is in the forecast. It isn’t winter yet but we’ve had our first snowfall last Sunday; in fact, on Thanksgiving Day, as I drove home from Sparta, NJ, it snowed in Route 15 but died down as I reached Route 80.
Has time changed or are we just worried about our own time bound?
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Chicago, ILLINOIS --- In my social studies classes in college in the Philippines, I was taught that “foreigners” or what US immigration authorities call “aliens” and native minorities are almost always relegated to the background and are called the “marginalized communities” in any country.
In the Philippines, the mainstream Filipinos are the so-called Christians (about 70 percent Catholics and about 10 percent Protestants) who are the shakers and movers of society called the Establishment. While the remaining minorities are the Sunni Muslims in Mindanao and 89 or so natives speaking different dialects or languages, like the Igorots and the Tausogs, and, of course, the ethnic Chinese, Koreans, Indians and other nationalities who visited the Philippines and decided to stay for good to work, study, set up business and raise their own families.
Now that I have settled in this foreign land called the United States, I am now living the angst, the struggles, the triumphs and failures of that marginal community called “Filipino community.”
Filipino Pride
Once in a long while, whenever one of our own makes it to the U.S. mainstream consciousness, like Corazon Amurao, a Filipino student nurse who was the lone survivor of the massacre that happened in Chicago nearly 40 years ago in what was billed as the “crime of the century”, and had a strong will to testify that sent to jail the cold-blooded beast of a killer and rapist, the entire Filipino race around the world celebrated her courage.
In much the same way that when the President Bush chose Cristeta Pasia Comerford as the White House Executive Chef, the entire Filipino American nation is also very proud for the recognition of a Filipino talent in culinary arts and sciences.
Bad Guys Have No Fans
Conversely, when one of our kind appears to have broken the law as in the case of Filipino immigrant Reynaldo B. Brucal, Jr., Filipinos don’t want to be associated with him. In the same manner that Americans don’t want to be associated with the six U.S. Marines accused of raping a Filipina student in the Philippines recently.
This is just an affirmation of the truism that “success has many fathers while failure is an orphan.”
One of the ways to get notice by the mainstream is to get oneself elected to some government positions, like the former Hawaii Gov. Benjamin Cayetano, the first Filipino American governor in the U.S.
In the early part of this year, several Filipino Americans in Chicago ran for several elective posts. But only one was elected. He is civic leader Jerry B. Clarito, the new commissioner of the Park District of Chicago’s suburban Skokie, Illinois.
Another Filipino American community leader is trying to follow Clarito’s footsteps. She is Evelyn D. Natividad, Ph. D., a school teacher/library specialist of the Chicago Public Schools by profession and is active in leadership positions in numerous socio-civic organizations.
A multi-awarded civic leader, Dr. Natividad wants to test the waters in this exclusive turf of mainstream America. She wants to be elected as one of the three Sanitary District commissioners of the nine-person board of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Illinois’ Cook County, which includes Chicago. A commissioner gets a $50,000 annual salary and holds the elective post for six years with re-election.
Go Write or Call Evelyn
But to get in the ballot during the March 21, 2006 Primary Elections, Evelyn needs more than 8,000 signatures of registered voters in Cook County to endorse her by Monday, Dec. 12th, 2005 but she needs your petitions by Dec. 10, 2005, Saturday.
Please call her now at 773.342.0906 or her cell phone at 773.457.3402 or fax her at 773.342.9160 or email her at citizens4evelyn_natividad@yahoo.com or join the listserv citizens4evelyn_natividad@yahoogroups.com or write or send her back the petitions at 2448 West Thomas, Chicago, IL 60622 if you want to get copies of her signature petitions; be her campaign volunteer; introduce her to your family, friends and neighbors; share your ideas and talents; or make a donation (time, money, in kind).
Please tell Evelyn you read it in my column. You will be glad you did!
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SUPPOSE the 79 Philippine provinces were countries unto themselves. How would people’s quality of life in them compare against those of other nations?
Philippine Human Development Report 2005 does just that. As it has been doing since 1999, this biennial report stacks Philippine provinces against other countries. “An international perspective has the advantage of putting, in context, the amount of effort that must still be done by national and local governments, “ it asserts.
The results are a sobering reality check.
“It is eye-opening that, in an international perspective, provinces with the lowest ( human development ) are comparable to a number of African countries, Cambodia or Myanmar,” noted PHDR five years ago.
Today, Metro Manilans are lead achievers. But they’re wedged in between Thais and Samoans, PHDR 2005 found. And they lag behind Singaporeans and Malaysians.
The tailender is Maguindanao. Life expectancy there shrunk from 53.2 years in 1997 to 52 today. That contrasts sharply with steady increases nationwide, as the late Fr. Wilhelm Fleiger of San Carlos University noted in his “gradients of mortality” study. Thus, PHDR brackets Maguindanao between Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
Pampangeños and Cebuanos now look forward to 72 years of life -- roughly comparable with that of Hungarians or Estonians. But this is still below a Singaporean’s 78.
“Muslim Mindanao provinces continue to be plagued by the lowest life expectancy,” PHDR 2000 points out. There’s been little change, PHDR 2005 found.
A 19-year gap separates Bulakenos and Nuevo Ecijancos from those in Sulu and Tawi-Tawi. Life expectancy there is 52 years. That matches those of Congolese or Haitians.
PHDR is sponsored by the UN Development Program and the Human Development Network which clusters Filipino scientists. Former National Economic Development Authority head Solita Monsod, launched the first edition in 1997. UP School of Economics professor Arsenio Balisacan now oversees PHDR.
Both the global and Philippine reports go beyond usual economic yardsticks, like gross national product. Instead, they deploy innovative “human development indicators”. These HDIs factor in: life expectancy, functional literacy, health services, adjusted incomes, etc and track quality of life more accurately.
Their conclusions jolt a people whose vision, critics say, end at the seashore. Does an insular geography constrict our mindsets?. We know little about other countries – except those where relatives or friends are overseas foreign workers.. The world, some assume, revolves around these 7,010 ( at high tide ) islands..
Here are some findings, as reflected in the “International Comparison” section in the 2005 report:
All provinces previously qualified within the “medium human development category.” Not anymore. Maguindanao’s backward slide crashed through that floor. Poverty is widespread with per capita income hovering around P14,198 compared to Rizal’s P32,181. Functional literacy is 68 percent compared to Abra’s 90 pecent.
Cebu ranked lower than Georgia and Azerbijan. ( About 28 percent of Cebuanos lack safe water ) The province huddles in the same group with Zambales, La Union and Pangasinan. And “Cavite’s HDI is roughly equivalent to that of Lebanon as Bataan’s is to the Maldives.”
State of development in Misamis Oriental, Ilocos Norte and Nueva Vizcaya resembles that of El Salvador and Vietnam. Iloilo and Tarlac approximate Kyrgzstan. .
Lower down, and cramped between Niicaragua and Mongolia, are : Abra, Bohol, Cagayan and Camiguin. while Bukidnon resembles Honduras and Palawan Tajikistan..
Disparitries occur between neighboring provinces. Negros Occidental’s higher human development places it alongside Indonesia. Way down are Negros Oriental ( basic enrolment rate is only 77 percent ) and Siquijor, stabled with Namibia.
Misamis Oriental and Ilocos Norte resemble El Salvador. But Occidental Misamis and Ilocos are lower, pegged alongside Mongolia. (Out of every peso, the poorest ten percent in Misamis Occidental have four centavos while the richest 10 percent consume 46 centavos) Leyte resembles Moldova. but Southern Leyte, two blocks down, is more like South Africa.
Gaps also separate the Davao provinces. Del Sur is comparable to Krygzstan and Del Norte Honduras. At the lower rung, Davao Oriental is like Gabon.
These new indicators “do nothing more than inform people and their leaders what is wrong and what is possible,” the report adds.
“Ultimately, their value is redeemed only when people – seeing the gap between what is and what could be – begin to demand more of themselves, and of those who purport to represent their interests.”
(E-mail : juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph)
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The December 2005 priority dates
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THE priority dates for all family-based petitions, except that of the Second Preference (unmarried sons and daughters over 21 years of green card holders), moved forward by at least one month, as shown in the December 2005 monthly Visa Bulletin.
The priority dates for employment-based petitions for professional and skilled workers moved by two weeks, while the priority date for “other” (unskilled) workers did not move at all.
Petitions by Citizens:
The priority date for the First Preference Category, F-1 (unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens, over 21 years of age) moved forward by one month, from July 22, 1991 to August 22, 1991.
The Third Preference Category F-3 (married sons and daughters of United States citizens) moved forward also by one month, from January 8, 1991 to February 8, 1991 (Note: There is now a difference of 6-1/2 months in priority dates between unmarried and married sons and daughters of U.S. citizens.).
The Fourth Preference, F-4 (brothers and sisters of United States citizens) also moved forward by two months, from July 1, 1983 to September 1, 1983.
Petitions by Green Card Holders:
The Second Preference, F-2A (spouse and minor children below 21 years of age, of green card holders) of Family-Based Petitions moved forward by one month, from December 1, 2001 to January 1, 2002.
The Second Preference, F-2B (unmarried sons and daughters, over 21 years of age, of green card holders), moved forward by about two weeks, from May 22, 1996 to June 8, 1996.
Petitions by Employers:
The Third Preference (professionals and skilled workers) of Employment-Based Petitions (Labor Certification), moved by two weeks, from March 1, 2001 to March 15, 2001. The Third Preference (non-skilled workers), did not move, and remained at October 1, 2000.
Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 24 years, and is an active member of the State Bar of California and New York, as well as the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Immigration Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He has always excelled in school: Valedictorian in High School; Cum Laude at UCLA; and Law Degree Honors and academic scholar at Loyola Law School, which is one of the top law schools in California.
WEBSITE: www.gurfinkel.com
Four offices to serve you:
LOS ANGELES:
219 North Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California, 91203
Telephone: (818) 543-5800
SAN FRANCISCO:
601 Gateway Boulevard, Suite 460, South San Francisco, CA 94080
Telephone: (650) 827-7888
NEW YORK:
60 East 42nd Street, Suite 2101, New York, NY 10165
Telephone: (212) 808-0300
PHILIPPINES:
Heart Tower, Unit 701, 108 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati, Philippines 1227
Telephone: 894-0258 or 894-0239
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