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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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WHAT’S in store for our beloved country the Philippines and for us Filipino Americans in the year 2006? It may be too early to say, but already one can see glimpses of the trials that await us in the new year.
Back home, despite the end-of-the-year rally of the peso, economy is far from being out of the quagmire it has been bogged in for so long now. Far from perking up, as President Gloria Arroyo was quick to claim, the ailing Philippine economy was given a much needed shot in the arm, albeit, temporarily, by the patriotic dollars sent by overseas Filipino workers.
Indeed, the recent show of strength of the peso only served to confirm the sad reality that dollar remittances from OFWs is the one thing that has been keeping the Philippine economy afloat. And there lies the problem. A nation should not leave its fate whether to sink or swim to the lifeline thrown by compatriots from foreign shores.
Because a nation’s sustenance or survival depends on its finest sons and daughters working far and away, the tendency of that government is to send more of its productive labor force to work abroad. The problem is, the exodus of Filipinos is draining the country of talents needed to restart the economy. With the unbridled flight of nurses and doctors to greener pastures, the country’s own health care system is on the verge of collapsing.
For Filipinos in the US, the newly passed Sensenbrenner-King Bill in the House of Representatives poses the worst possible challenge to the community. The bill, which makes overstaying a crime and which makes it harder for green card holder to become US citizens, is poised to affect hundreds of thousands of Filipinos here in the US.
Drop all illusion that it only affects undocumented or TNT Filipinos. It affects almost all of us, including those who are already waiting for green cards, or those waiting for citizenship. It also affects those of us who have already been naturalized US citizens.
Just consider this scenario: What if the bill is passed in the US Senate and signed by President Bush in law? What will happen to Filipino immigrants and the dollar remittances that they have been sending to their relatives in the Philippines? What will happen to the remittance-dependent economy back home?
2006 could prove to be our own annus horribilis.
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NEW YORK --- As 2005 draws to a close, newspaper editors usually come out with top stories of the year that they think captured the interest of their readers. For a community newspaper like The Filipino Express, I can’t remember having seen one. If there was a list, it must have been prior to my joining this newspaper as one of its columnists.
Being in the media, I can cite many. But one that perhaps would always make it in my list every year is the stories about the Philippine Independence Day Council, Inc. (PIDCI) and the National Federation of Filipino American Associations, Inc. (NaFFAA).
And the rest could be human interest stories or those that pertain to natural calamities, accidents, scams and other crimes.
One story that found its way this year, which is unprecedented, is the filing of defamation lawsuits by Nena Kaufman, 2003 Philippine Independence Celebration Committee chair, and Ludivina Hughes, 2004 NaFFAA New Jersey state chair.
And here are two breaking stories, which may not even appear in the front page of this week’s edition but are nonetheless important to be mentioned in this space.
Justice Carol Edmead of the Supreme Court of the State of New York has ruled on December 6 to dismiss the complaint filed by Kaufman against Philip Carreon and Lolita Gillberg for lack of personal jurisdiction and that the service of the October 1, 2005 Summons and Complaint was time-barred from the applicable one year statute of limitation.
However, according to a lawyer from Ahmuty, Demers & McManus representing Gillberg, she “had received an affirmation from the plaintiff’s prior counsel Mr. Paul Saqqal, Esq., requesting that the Court reconsider her decision to dismiss the actions.” She also “anticipates that the plaintiff’s current counsel Mr. Emad Iskaros, Esq. will appeal these decisions all together.”
In the meantime, Thomas Cafferty of Scarinci & Hollenbeck, LLC, representing The Filipino Express, Lito Gajilan, and me has responded to Ludi Hughes’ complaint.
In his response, Cafferty cited sixteen affirmative defenses.
This includes that any “statement allegedly made by these Defendants constitutes a fair comment as to a matter of public and general interest and concern” which are privileged and non-actionable and that “Defendants actions are protected by the United States and New Jersey Constitution.” He demanded dismissal of the lawsuit and award of attorneys fees and costs of suit.
One need not be surprised about any news regarding PIDCI and NaFFAA.
It seems that the life of the community revolves around them. These two organizations -- one based locally and the other, nationally with local chapters -- are supposed to be leading the community in empowering Filipinos and Filipino Americans through the associations’ avowed objectives.
Although they are distinct from one another and have different mandates, they are (almost) governed by the same people that belong to either organization.
And because these organizations draw the interests of the community’s social circle, both enjoy high visibility and are sought after by “community leader” wannabes. Some think that their presence in functions attended by top-ranking government officials and other high-profile local professionals make them important as well. Hence, they consider themselves “community leaders.”
Just check out the names of its past and current leaders and one may find no compelling difference between the leadership of the two organizations; if there is any, it may only be superficial – one that can be conveniently ignored. That is why for someone who is not familiar with this setup, he can easily conclude that both organizations are one and the same – just different organizational names.
People from either of the two organizations create news for themselves. Yet when the stories are about their leaders’ action or inaction – despite consciously aware of their public figure status – their supposed leaders cry foul and resort to all kinds of intimidation.
But as an organization, what have they accomplished?
For PIDCI, there is not much to say except the ordinary – what they are mandated to do, which is, to hold an independence celebration. Beyond that, there is always a nagging question about its financial report.
The last I heard, 2003 and 2004 financial statements have not been completed yet. Why it takes so long to report public funds is a question that’s been echoed many times and yet nothing positive has come out of it.
It seems every year is no different from the past. And the same story of politics, petty quarrels, and divisiveness prevail, which surprises me. If the same people are there year after year, in what ways did they contribute to make it a united, better organization? How different is the organization now than when they first joined it?
For NaFFAA, I cannot see any further development from when it had its conference here in 1999. As I’ve said many times, its leaders exist only from one election to the other.
What substantive issues have been brought out that made a difference in our community?
Many more could be expected from these organizations. Not just feeble stories about its leaders and their whim and vanity, but top stories, which, unite, empower and make us proud as a community.
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The latest con game at the NAIA
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Chicago, ILLINOIS --- Recently, my friend, Commissioner Al Fernandez of the Philippine Bureau of Immigration issued an edict to his subordinates to avoid greeting arriving passengers in the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, “Merry Christmas.”
The former mayor of Dagupan City told his people that greeting the travel-weary passengers might be misinterpreted to mean that they some pasalubongs (arrival gifts) from these passengers to facilitate their exit from Manila’s international airport.
Wishing for a Christmas Bonus
I wish the order had enclosed some extra pay (bonus) to his subordinates. If not, it is going to be a very big sacrifice on the part of his men and women, who might be used to receiving Christmas gifts from some philanthropic-minded passengers.
Or perhaps, the employees of immigration or other government agencies, like the bureau of customs, the aviation security, the airport police, the tourism, the baggage boys, the janitors, etc., who might follow the example of Fernandez’ men will realize that employment in government service is really all that -- public service.
Otherwise, it will be too tempting for them to conspire with some unscrupulous denizens who have access inside NAIA to join the latest confidence game in the airport.
Latest Con Game
According to my friend, Dennis Villanueva of Florida, who is a regular traveler between Manila and Florida, he got some information from some of his sources that some enterprising people crowding the carousel, where newly arriving passengers wait for their turn to pick up their baggage, are not really newly-arrived balikbayans (Filipino home comers).
They are there to make fast bucks, using their sleight of hands. They pretend to be picking up an unzipped baggage and will insert a bullet in the baggage.
The owner of the baggage becomes a marked man. He will be followed by these enterprising people and after a few steps, he will be asked to open his baggage, which will yield, what else (?), the bullet. The passenger will then be accosted by a so-called “anti-terrorism” policeman who will accuse him of “concealing an accessory to a dangerous weapon.”
The balikbayan naturally will be asked to settle the matter as he is not allowed to make an emergency 9-1-1 phone call. After he coughs up the “right amount of dollars,” the balikbayan is allowed to exit the airport.
The best thing really to do under this situation is first of all to look at the eyes of this “anti-terrorism” policeman and his cohorts so you won’t forget their faces. Second, ask to be taken to his supervisor and the supervisor’s supervisor. If not, you have to scream in such a way as to attract attention.
Thrown to jail
If you do not raise a howl and agree to be taken to a detention room, you will likely be thrown inside Pasay city police station and join the other common criminals.
Inside the jail, because you cannot stand the smell and stench of the crowded humans, you will be forced to fork your hard-earned dollars to pay the jailers, the fiscals and the judges.
I wish my friend, Pasay City Fiscal Frank Beron will know about this and order an investigation.
I am still verifying the report that this incident happened to a 75-year-old woman who has to be carried out of the jail cell after she agreed to settle with the law enforcement officers. The old lady was too wobbly to walk after spending the night in jail.
Third Time It Happened
An “Atty. Romero” says that this sort of case is the third he’s handled in the last few months.
Now that Christmas is upon us, the same modus operandi, if they remain unchecked, will certainly bring more nightmares to our kababayans (fellow Filipinos).
But those unscrupulous scam artists around NAIA, who could not get inside the airport, have a different means of milking you dry.
If you board a car out of the airport and someone flags you down in the highway, don’t stop. If you do, stop by the nearest police station. Otherwise, you will be losing not only your balikbayan boxes but also the shirt on your back.
Ask First
And if you happen to go in a night club, and someone invites to sing, make sure to ask the host if you have anything to pay. If you don’t ask because you think you are doing them a favor for showing them your singing talents, you should be ready to pay for the use of the band and the place, and, of course, the food.
If you can avoid some of these indiscretions when you go home to the Philippines for Christmas these next few weeks, I’m sure you will not only be enjoying your Christmas. But you will also be looking forward to this coming brand new year.
Happy New Year to all!
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Revisiting Christmases past
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THE grime-streaked beggar at the church door wouldn’t budge. Misa de Gallo had just ended. If delayed, I’d miss that overbooked flight for Bangkok. As a “martial law refugee”, Thailand was my United Nations duty station for 17 years. Kids were flying in from US schools to join us for Christmas.
Shifting his battered can, the beggar persisted. “Don’t you remember me?” Seeing the blank look in my eyes, he murmured : “We were classmates in grade school. I am Candido.....”
Memory scraped away the wrinkles, the dirt and in-between years. We had played “patintero” and other games of childhood. We built model airplanes and sailed toy boats. Vacations, we’d swim in nearby resorts.
Today? Tiene cara de hambre. “You have the face of hunger,” the orphan boy tells the Crucifed in the film classic: “Marcelino, Pan Y Vino.”
We barely managed snatches of conversation. Airline schedules are unyielding. Couldn’t I have dropped, into his tin cup, more than what was hurriedly fished out of a shirt pocket?, I asked as the immigration officer waved us on.
We’re all invited to journey to Bethlehem, including those with numbered accounts, cigarette tax break bonanzas and illegal logging take. But like my beggared-classmate, many wearily limp to “the City of David” with empty tin cans. Billionaires here lodge in “gated enclaves” while many lack frugal livelihoods. “There’s no room in the inn.”
Yet, “Christmas is the only time I know of when men and women, seem by one consent, to open their shut-up hearts freely,” Charles Dickens wrote in 1843. Like the re-engineered Ebenezer Scrooge, they “think of people below them, not as another race of creatures bound on other journeys, but as fellow passengers to the grave.”
I’ve never seen my beggar-friend again. But he forms part of Christmases past images. As the years slip by, these mental snapshots remain. But revisiting them, one discovers that a chiaroscuro bittersweet streak overlays the montage.
Images include kindnesses by friends one now rarely sees. I rushed out to talk with a pediatrician, glimpsed midway through an Advent mass. Dr Mike Celdran lavished care on my now-grown kids. I wanted him to meet my lawyer-daughter and her doctor husband, visiting for Christmas. But he had left.
“That season comes wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated / The bird of dawning singeth all night long,” one reads in “Hamlet”. The OFWs too were singing carols like Ang Pasko Ay Sumapit at the SVD Fathers Verbiti conference room on Christmas Day. Did they sing the old Spanish carols like Nacio Nacio Pastores? I don’t remember now.
Verbiti is tucked close to Hadrian’s wall in Rome. It was festooned with star lanterns, belen, even lechon. But corrosive loneliness contorted the faces of many in that room, separated from kith and kin, in “this “hallowed and gracious time”. One glimpsed in the tears slipping past tightly-closed eyes, the economic diaspora’s costs. Hidden behind those hefty foreign exchange remittances are: pain, separation, alienation, trauma even. Tiene cara de hambre.
Christmas, the Filipino SVD fathers told their expat flock, is “Emmanuel — God with us” in the dark night, even of despair. “There are no more unvisited places in our lives.”
Illnesses in absent family is shattering for expats. We trudged to the Crib in Gereja Theresia ( St Therese’s Church ), behind Jakarta’s giant mall : Sarina. Half a world away, alone in a Los Angeles ICU room, an economic diaspora statistic — my younger brother — lay dying.
In January, Jesse phoned. Life is fragile, he said. We don’t know when we will see each other again. Let’s meet in Cebu with our then 86-year old mother.
He flew in from LA. Our only sister from Toronto arrived. And we joined in from Bangkok. We had a laughter-filled week. In July, our mother went. “Please. No heroic measures,” our sister-in-law soberly cautioned the cardiac team that rushed in. And by December, Jesse was gone too.
The Child of Bethlehem enables us to see beyond the grave. “Death is not the extinguishing of life,” the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote. “It is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.”
From our third floor flat in Bangkok, we’d watch this Thai lady slip into the deserted courtyard of Holy Redeemer Church. Draped in the Advent dawn’s soft darkness, she’d pray before the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help -- until Misa de Gallo, introduced by Filipino workers, would start. Her silhouette brought Isaiah’s lines to mind: “The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light,” Isaiah writes “Kings shall (stream) to the brightness of thy rising.”
That silhouette, like the image of a Muntinlupa prisoner, forms part of our Christmases past. Clad in sweat-stained detainee togs, the prisoner wouldn’t budge. If delayed, I’d miss a dinner appointment.
Seeing the blank look in my eyes, he murmured: “Don’t you remember me? We were playmates in Cebu. My name is Policarpio....”
There is, we’re told, a geography of the heart. Like the Magi, we travel its byways, not merely from place to place, but from grace to grace. It is a search for what endures amid the transient. Without fail, we find it in those with cara de hambre.
“And they found the Child with Mary his mother,” the story goes. Venite adoremus.
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The January 2006 priority dates
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The priority dates for petitions by US citizen parents did not move forward, but those filed by immigrant parents moved by two weeks, as shown in the January 2006 monthly Visa Bulletin.
The priority dates for employment-based petitions for unskilled workers moved forward by six months.
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) did not move at all, and remained at
August 22, 1991 .
The
Third Preference Category F-3 (married sons and daughters of United States citizens
) also did not move, and remained at
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)
moved forward by one month, from September 1, 1983 to
October 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 two weeks, from January 1, 2002, to
January 15, 2002
.
The
Second Preference, F-2B (unmarried sons and daughters, over 21 years of age, of green card holders), also moved forward by two weeks, from June 8, 1996 to
June 22, 1996
.
Petitions by Employers:
The
Third Preference (professionals and skilled workers)
of Employment-Based Petitions (Labor Certification), moved by two weeks, from March 15, 2001 to
April 1, 2001
. The
Third Preference (non-skilled workers)
, moved forward by six months, from October 1, 2000 to
April 1, 2001.
Each month, the Visa Office of the State Department publishes the priority dates for that particular month. This means that visas would now be available for persons
whose priority date is
earlier than the cut-off date listed below
.
The
January 2006 priority dates for the
Philippines are as follows:
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FAMILY CATEGORY: |
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Priority Date: |
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First Preference |
Unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens
(over 21 years of age)
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August 22, 1991
(In December 2005, the priority date was the same.)
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Second Preference |
2A. Spouse and minor children
(below 21 years old) of green card holder
2B. Unmarried sons and daughters (over 21
years old) of green card holder
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January 15, 2002
(In December 2005, the priority date was January 1, 2002.)
June 22, 1996
(In December 2005, the priority date was June 8, 1996)
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Third Preference |
Married sons and daughters of
U.S. Citizens |
February 8, 1991
(In December 2005, the priority date was the same.)
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Fourth Preference
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Brothers and sisters of U.S. Citizens
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October 1, 1983
(In December 2005, the priority date was September 1, 1983.)
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LABOR CERTIFICATION: |
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Third Preference |
Professional/Skilled Workers |
April 1, 2001
(In
December 2005, the priority date was March 15, 2001.) |
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Other Workers |
Non-Skilled workers |
April 1, 2001
(In December 2005, the priority was October 1, 2000.)
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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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