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For the past 20 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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WEDDING TRAGEDY. A cross hangs from the rearview mirror of the Mercedez-Benz driven by Emily Manzano, who was killed along with two passengers in a collision with a truck Friday in Brandon. They were preparing to attend her daughter's wedding. (The St. Petersburgh Times)
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Tampa, FLORIDA --- Filipino American Cathy Manzano and her mother spent a year preparing for her wedding. Together, they planned each detail. The 14 pairs of godparents. The Filipino gowns. The Barong Tagalog shirts.
On Saturday, April 22, Cathy Manzano was married, honoring traditions important to her mother Emily.
Right after the wedding, the bride must bury her mother.
Early Friday morning, a 2004 Mercedes-Benz carrying the mother and four family members in town for the wedding collided with a 2003 Dodge Durango at the intersection of Lumsden Road and Parsons Avenue in Brandon, Florida.
Emily Manzano was driving. Manzano, 62, of Brandon, Sonia Medders, 58, of Oceanside, Calif., and Juliebeth Olega, 37, of Clifton Heights, Pa., were killed.
Medders and Olega were the bride’s cousins.
Manzano’s 73-year-old sister, Lily Foster, and a third niece, 46-year-old Victora Weaver, both of Sparks, Nev., were injured and taken to Tampa General Hospital, authorities said.
Cathy Manzano and Cory Jones, 27, exchanged vows as planned Saturday, but postponed their honeymoon to Las Vegas and Costa Rica.
‘’We decided we can’t just not do it because she’s not going to be there. We wanted everybody to come together to celebrate my mom and celebrate my wedding,’’ Cathy Manzano said Friday.
Durango driver Kenneth Stewart, 34, of Lakeland was released Friday evening from Lakeland Regional Medical Center, as was one of his passengers, Tommy Walker, 39, of New York. Anthony Close, 29, also of New York, remained hospitalized.
No charges have been filed. Sheriff’s officials were still trying to piece together what happened. Officials said one vehicle ran a red light, but they had not determined which driver was at fault. There were no skid marks at the scene, indicating neither vehicle braked.
Deputies smelled alcohol on Stewart and took a blood sample for analysis, said sheriff’s spokesman J.D. Callaway.
No one answered at Stewart’s Lakeland house. His neighbors said they did not know him.
Stewart has been cited in Florida twice for speeding, once for disobeying a traffic sign or device and twice for driving with a suspended or revoked license, according to state records.
Stewart told investigators he got lost on the way to meet someone.
For the Manzano family, it had been a night of greeting relatives at airports on both sides of Tampa Bay.
When it was time to drive guests to the Manzano house in Brandon, cousins, nieces and nephews piled into three cars. They took the scenic route, Bayshore Boulevard to State Road 60. Wilfredo Manzano, Cathy Manzano’s father, drove slowly to keep everyone together.
On U.S. 301, his wife’s car pulled up to pass. The people in her car waved to the others, disappearing into the night.
A little while later, about 3 a.m., the husband’s car passed a wreck on Parsons Avenue shortly after 3 a.m. Friday but didn’t realize it was his wife’s 2004 Mercedes-Benz until he arrived home and saw that her car wasn’t there.
It had just happened; no ambulances or deputies were there yet. His headlights gleamed off broken glass.
He kept driving. He had seen people with cell phones emerging from the Durango. Later, he would wish he had stopped.
“I didn’t want to believe that it was something we were involved in,” he said.
The family had lived in the Tampa area for more than 25 years and had deep roots in the tight-knit Filipino community. Emily Manzano worked for Bank of America. Her husband is a community service officer for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.
Emily and Wilfredo were founding members of the Filipino-American Association of Tampa Bay.
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New York City, NEW YORK --- Filipino Americans across the United States are urging US legislators, who are currently locked up in an immigration debate, to work for faster processing of family visas.
The Justice For Immigrants Filipino Coalition also called on Filipinos to join or support the nationn-wide May 1 “Day of Action” rally by various immigrant groups to press US lawmakers to scrap HR 4437 and to pass a more humane immigration reform law.
In a recent national immigrant rights conference in Chicago, various immigrant rights groups and coalitions, who had been responsible for massive demonstrations in Los Angeles, Chicago, Milwaukee, Phoenix, and elsewhere, adapted key national demands in pursuit of comprehensive immigration reforms that were just and humane. A national network was formed.
Representatives from the J4I, a broad national formation of Filipino organizations and individuals pushing for just and humane immigration reforms, explained the relevance of family reunification for immigrants at the conference that was later adopted by the conference body as a national platform demand. J4I also fielded the only Filipino representation at the nearly 90 percent Latino-attended networking conference.
According to immigration policy analyst and New York lawyer Cristina Godinez, over 70 percent of all Filipinos who migrate to the US apply under family sponsorship.
“The statutory limit on the number of family-based visas per country is unrealistic,” Godinez explained, “As a result, family visas allotted to high-volume countries like the Philippines and Mexico are exhausted and applicants have to wait up to 23 years to have their visa applications processed.”
“There are different wait times for every family-based category. Some Filipino applicants who wish to remain in a category with a relatively shorter wait time such as unmarried children of US citizens purposely stay unmarried even if they already have their own families,” Godinez said, “This is quite a dilemma for Filipinos who are mostly Catholic, because in that situation they would be ‘living in sin.’”
“No one should have to compromise one’s religious convictions just to be reunited with one’s family in the US,” Godinez added, “This is against basic American values.”
“It is a harsh and painful reality all Filipinos in this country are connected to,” stated Julia Camagong of the Philippine Forum, a member organization of J4I. “My parents were petitioned by their siblings in the US and had to wait up to 25 years, to be reunited with their loved ones. It is very cruel and tears so many Filipino families apart.”
“It is not just a question of legalization. We want to increase the family visa quota, and a more efficient processing of family-based visas. There is no excuse for such a snail’s pace processing. Filipino families are suffering,” Camagong ended.
Robert Roy, executive director of the Philippine Forum, says the experience is common for all Filipinos. “My parents also waited up to 15 years to see their families again, and my brothers and their families back home are still one of the millions of Filipinos lost in the tedious visa backlog.”
Roy also explained that the push for mass exodus of Filipinos from the Philippines as the Philippine government’s remedy for joblessness and economic crisis breaks up more than 3,000 families a day.
“Given the wait period for family visas in this country, it is no wonder we have generations and generations of Filipinos growing up without parents and other family members. This is a grave social cost for us,” Roy explained.
Immigration advocates say the May 1 rally, also dubbed as “A Day Without Immigrants”, will flood America’s streets with millions of immigrants demanding amnesty for illegal immigrants.
“There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We’re going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno,” said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it debates the issue.
In New York, the rally will be held from 4:00 to 7:00 pm at Union Square.
Filipinos are encouraged to join the J4I contingent, which will convene at 3:00 pm on the northeast corner of Broadway and 14th Street in Manhattan before joining the main rally.
J4I is a member of the May 1st Coalition steering committee.
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MANILA --- At least nine US states are now “eagerly recruiting” Filipino nurses and other health professionals, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines said.
Former senator and TUCP general secretary Ernesto Herrera identified the nine US states as California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and New Jersey.
“Over 50 percent of 77.5 million American baby boomers — those born between 1946 to 1964 — live in these nine states. This is why these states need health professionals by the thousands,” Herrera said. Baby boomers now represent 28 percent of the US population. The oldest baby boomers are turning 60 this year, and Herrera said they are starting to strain US health care facilities such as hospitals, clinics and nursing homes.
Based on a demographic profile, Herrera also identified 16 other US states where baby boomers account for at least 30 percent of the (state’s) population.
These are Alaska, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Maryland, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Wyoming, Washington, Montana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Herrera cited the case of hospitals in Texas that have resorted to pirating experienced Filipino nurses from California.
“Hospitals in Texas have been luring Filipino nurses from California and other states with acceptance bonuses of $50,000, on top of covering their relocation expenses. That is a lot of money, equal to a year’s pay for senior Filipino nurses in California,” Herrera said.
“Filipino nurses in California are stressed out. Many of them are working for two or even three hospitals at the same time,” Herrera said, adding that hospitals in the Golden State have also been swamped by settlers from Mexico that purposely give birth in the US in order to avail of lucrative federal and state subsidies.
“Most American baby boomers are filthy rich, having benefited from the stock market and real estate booms. Many baby boomer households are privately retaining nurses and caregivers,” Herrera pointed out.
Herrera made the disclosure not long after a study by the University of the Philippines’ National Institute of Health claimed that the Philippines has emerged as the world’s top exporter of nurses.
The Association of Philippine Medical Colleges also reported that over 100,000 nurses have left the country since 1994, with 57 percent of them going to Saudi Arabia, 14 percent to the US and 12 percent to the United Kingdom. The rest went to Libya, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Singapore, Kuwait, Brunei, Japan and the Nordic countries.
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Newark, NEW JERSEY --- The lawyer for former Philippine National Police official Michael Ray Aquino, whos is being held here in the United States in connection with a espionage case, has pressed the the US District Court to allow his defense to gather the testimony of ex-President Joseph Estrada and two legislators.
The request came after the prosecution named former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, Senator Panfilo Lacson and former House Representative Arnulfo Fuentebella as alleged co-conspirators in the plot to steal classified U.S, government information during Monday’s hearing.
If granted by Senior U.S. District Judge William Walls, the taking of depositions will most likely be held in the Philippines, considering the condition of Estrada who is under house arrest for corruption charges, while the two lawmakers may not be keen in traveling to the U.S. and risk possible arrest.
Amid opposition from U.S. Assistant Prosecutor Karl Buch, the presiding judge gave Berman one month to convince the court that the taking of depositions will materially have a bearing on the case against Aquino.
The next hearing is set on May 23.
It was Buch who finally named Estrada, Lacson and Fuentebellas as unindicted co-conspirators along with Filipino American Leandro Aragoncillo, a former FBI analyst.
He alleged they conspired to steal classified information with Aragoncillo illegally accessing intelligence information from the FBI files about the Philippine socio-economic and political situation.
Buch’s naming the three Filipino personalities was a bid to bolster the prosecution’s case that Aquino was an unregistered foreign agent passing classified information as a conduit by the four who allegedly conspired to steal U.S. government intelligence in toppling Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Berman maintained Aquino may have been used as an unwitting pawn who may have passed some information downloaded by Aragoncillo from the FBI files to several opposition personalities in the Philippines without knowing they were classified.
He argued the depositions will affirm their stand and free Aquino from any culpability.
Both Estrada and Lacson reportedly issued statements last week they are willing to give their respective depositions on the espionage case in the Philippines.
In an interview during a break in his plundertrial at the Sandiganbayan Special Division in Manila, Estrada admitted that he received e-mails and other communications from Aragoncillo.
He said what he got, though, were the same as that one can read in the Philippine newspapers about the country’s political situation.
He said he even showed the information he received to Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales and Malacanang Chief of Staff Michael Defensor to prove nothing was classified about them.
Although Estrada said he is willing to submit to a deposition in the “proper time,” he wondered why his name was singled out in the report, because he said he was not the only one who receivedsuch communications from Aragoncillo.
“So many people received the information. Why are they singling me out?” he asked.
Aragoncillo was arrested in November 2005 in New Jersey on charges that he downloaded over 100 intelligence documents.US authorities nabbed Aquino on the same day at his home in Queens, New York for allegedly taking classified documents from Aragoncillo and transmitting the information to opposition politicians in Manila.
Aside from Berman convincing Walls on the May 23 hearing the depositions are necessary, the court will also review the prosecution’s evidence against Aquino.
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