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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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A disaster need not become a tragedy
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FOR almost a week now, our most beautiful yet most deadly and active volcano, Mayon, has been dazzling us with its spectacular fireworks. But with experts predicting a violent eruption within weeks, Mayon’s recent restiveness ought to remind us of the earth-shaking truth that the Philippines is the most disaster-prone country in the world.
According to the Belgium-based Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters of the Université Catholique de Louvain (CRED-UCL), an average of 12 natural disasters, or one per month, has descended on the Philippines since 1986.
The Philippines have more than 200 volcanoes, at least 17 of which are considered active. In the last 25 years, five of the principal active volcanoes erupted – Kanlaon, Bulusan, Taal, Mayon and Pinatubo. From 1986-1995, there were six significant volcanic eruptions. The most destructive in recent years was that of Pinatubo in 1991, which deposited lahar deposits that took 10 rainy seasons to wash down the mountain’s slope.
In our country, an average of 20 typhoons, two of which are supertyphoons, visit the Philippines annually, said our weather bureau, PAGASA.
There were 63 earthquakes that caused major destruction from 1589 to 1983. From 1984 to 2000, there were eight killer quakes that rocked the country.
With a 13,500-kilometer coastline that is the longest in the world, Philippine coastal areas, particularly those in southwest Mindanao, are vulnerable to tsunamis as high as four meters. Most of these tsunamis are caused by nearby earthquakes.
The CRED-UCL study listed seven of the most disaster-prone countries in the world: Bangladesh, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma) and the Philippines. And our beloved country has the unenviable distinction of being on top of the unstable heap. Nearly 50 percent of natural disasters that hit these countries have been recorded in our archipelago.
The Philippines sits helplessly in the middle of the Typhoon Belt, right smack on the Paciific ring of fire and on top of the very unstable Indian, Eurasian and Pacific plates.
What all these data mean is that the government should do everything within its power and resources to educate the people about disaster preparedness.
No one can prevent a natural disaster from happening. But the government can sure can do a lot in preventing a disaster from becoming a tragedy by minimizing human casualty.
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PHNOM PENH – A friend forwarded an e-mail that was almost a mile long. Okay I’m exaggerating; it probably was just about 45-pages long if it were printed. But the actual message – found at the very end -- did not even use up one page. The rest of the pages contained names of hundreds of people.
These folks, whose names appear in the list of recipients, may have been convinced that re-forwarding the e-mail to their friends and relatives would be receiving a fat check from either Microsoft or AOL.
The whole thing is a hoax. There is no such thing that tracks names of people that forwards e-mails as a basis of a monetary rewards program from either company. Even though Bill Gates is considered the richest man in the whole wide world, he is not that dim-witted to reward $15,000 to anyone forwarding a comical e-mail.
But believe it or not, there are people, no matter how smart they consider themselves to be, that are lured into believing a practical joke. It is like believing in a similar e-mail from someone purporting to have hundreds of millions of dollars deposited in a bank in Nigeria or Hong Kong waiting to be withdrawn. All you had to do was to respond quickly to the e-mail.
Or as I recall from another e-mail circulated years ago, the U.S. Congress was ready to impose a “stamp tax” for every electronic mail that was sent. The legislation was being finalized, according to the e-mail, to help the U.S. Postal Service recover its losses from an e-mail boom. Whoa! It turned out to be a hoax.
People got the hang of it and started joining a supposed petition drive to stop the passage of a “stamp tax bill” on electronic mail. The chain mail got the attention it desired but imagine how many thousands of people were made to believe the proposed legislation was true. It was like believing Elvis Presley is alive and kicking, belting out his songs in some remote place in the planet.
This “modern” method of chain mail is a variant of chain letters which went around many years ago with the use of a regular postage. Previously, it was a letter with a “religious” connotation, promising either a blessing or a threat of something bad happening to you, which found its way to your mailbox at home or office. Normally, the letter was supposed to be sent to a minimum of ten people.
If you decided to send the same letter to every Tom, Dick, Harry and Jane you know, it was a blessing. On the other hand, if you broke the chain, it was a curse; some unlikely bad event would happen within three days. I still see those types of letters sent through the Internet but I ignore them completely in an effort to unchain the mail, so to speak.
Those days, a fifteen-cent postage stamp was already considered high considering the service the USPS provided. Just imagine how much it would have cost you if electronic mail wasn’t around these days.
Nowadays, even though it may cost you nothing but frustration and clutter in your e-mail box, some senders are persistent; at worse, a threat is always there if you broke the chain.
I am glad Pierre, a frustrated victim of chain mails, stood up for this non-sense and blurted out his thoughts. He thanked his friends and family who have forwarded chain letters to him in 2004 and 2005.
He wrote:
“Because of your kindness, I stopped drinking Coca Cola after I found out it is good for removing toilet stains;
“I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS;
“I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer;
“I don’t leave my car in the parking lot or any other place and sometimes I even have to walk about seven blocks for fear that someone will drug me with a perfume sample and try to rob me;
“I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a phone bill from hell with calls made to Uganda, Singapore and Tokyo;
“I also stopped drinking anything out of a can for fear that I will get sick from the rat feces and urine;
“When I go to parties, I don’t look at any girl, no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice;
“I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times (Poor girl! She’s been 7 years old since 1993…)
“My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland;
“Still open to help some from Bulgaria who wants to use my account to transfer his uncle’s property worth hundred million dollars;
“Made some hundred wishes before forwarding those Ganesh Vandana, Tirupathi Balaji pics etc…. now most of those “Wishes” are already married (to someone else).”
His e-mail ended with an important note that says: “If you do not send this e-mail to at least 1,246 people in the next 10 seconds, a bird will fly over your head to make a drop at any time.”
It was a satirical piece but seriously, we all just need to unchain letters if we receive one. Simply press the erase key in your keyboard. Now don’t tell me you can’t find it; because if you don’t, the joke is on you.
Unchain letters, will you?
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40 years after, Corazon Amurao, still full of heart and love
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CHICAGO, Illinois -- It was the first time that I ever ran into the word Chicago in the days following July 14, 1966.
It was the day 40 years ago last Friday (July 14), radios in the Philippines woke up the Filipino people with breaking news that eight nurses, including two Filipinos, were butchered in Chicago.
I was in high school in my province of Sorsogon in the Philippines at that time when I realized that there was such a city named Chicago in the United States.
I did not have any idea that 20 years later I would be headed to that city that was the scene of the “crime of the century.”
Like kissing the ground
So just like the papal gesture of kissing the ground, the first thing that came to mind when I arrived in Chicago as a newspaper correspondent for the daily Manila Bulletin was to visit the townhouse in the south side of Chicago, where a drifter from Texas named Richard Franklin Speck would stab and kill eight young nurses, including Valentina P. Pasion, 24, of Jones, Isabela and Merlita Ornedo Gargullo, 22, of Naujan, Mindoro.
Only one young nurse named Corazon Pieza Amurao, 23, of San Luis, Batangas, would survive the heinous crime to tell her story.
Pasion, Gargullo and Amurao were all Filipino exchange nurses.
The incident would spawn numerous books and movies and broke some legal grounds when the court moved the trial of the celebrated case from Chicago to outlying suburb of Peoria to give Speck a “fair trial,” which takes precedence over “freedom of the press,” in keeping with the Sam Sheppard case.
A Filipino is a credible witness
It also proved that a Filipino witness is a credible and courageous witness.
My visit to the townhouse would later lead me to interview a classmate of Ms. Amurao, who was the first to respond when Amurao screamed, “Oh, my God. They are all dead.” Judith J. Dykton, also a student nurse at the South Chicago Community Hospital (now Advocate Trinity Hospital) lived two doors west. Ms. Dykton, now Mrs. Radzik, told this columnist she saw one of the victims, Gloria J. Davy, 22, of Dyer, Indiana, lying nude in the living room as she led Amurao out of the blood-soaked townhouse.
Jack G. Wallenda, the first Chicago police homicide detective to arrive at the crime scene, told this columnist that Davy was lying face down and had a strip of bed sheet tightly tied around her neck and knotted at the back. Semen was found in her body.
Two other slain victims – Pamela Lee Wilkening, 22, of Lansing; and Nina Jo Schmale, 24, of Wheaton, both in Illinois – were also raped.
Aside from Pasion, Gargullo, Davy, Wilkening and Schmale, the other slain victims were Patricia A. Matusek, 21, Mary Ann Jordan, 20, and Suzanne Bridget Farris, 21, all of Chicago; all in Illinois and also all senior nursing students due to graduate the following month.
Debunking survival theory
The incident chipped away at the conventional wisdom of accommodating an armed intruder instead of putting up a resistance to survive. Amurao and Gargullo tried to loosen their hands and Amurao whispered to others that when she freed herself, she could pick up a steel bunk ladder and hit the man with it. They could have leaped on him and overpowered him.
They could have done this when Speck was stripping the bed sheets to use them to tie their hands and ankles as he laid his gun aside.
But the rest told them to keep still as they accommodated Speck’s demand to give him $38 as he was heading to New Orleans.
Foresight and luck pay
Although a sneeze away from getting detected, two things that saved Amurao’s life were her foresight and her pure luck when Speck lost count. As Speck took Gargullo out of the bunk bed from the room and stabbed and killed her in another room as he had done with the rest, leaving Davy on top of the bunk bed and Amurao under the bunk bed, Amurao summoned all her strength to wiggle herself towards the bunk bed earlier occupied by Gargullo. So that when Speck returned to look at Amurao’s previous location and saw it empty, Speck thought that Davy was the last in the room.
The case also demonstrated that individual rights take precedence over diplomatic niceties. As the Philippine Consul General Generoso Provido in Chicago at the time wanted to provide legal assistance to Amurao, the young nurse diplomatically declined the offer after getting wind of the scheme that the Filipino American lawyer being recommended by Provido was more interested in getting a slice from money generated from rights to her story than protecting her legal rights.
No personal benefit
In a curt statement, Miss Amurao issued the following statement:
“It is my desire to make it clear that the memory of dear colleagues is of such character that I do not want to have it tainted by the acceptance by me of money or other personal benefit.”
Aside from getting $5,000 out of the $10,000 reward money offered by the South Chicago Community Hospital leading to the solution of the case, Amurao has stuck by her word, resisting bids for her to sell her rights to her horrifying experience.
It is possible, Corazon Amurao is living up to her belief and her name, which means “Heart in Love” in Spanish.
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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REAMS of comment have been published or aired on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines’ latest pastoral letter: “Shepherding and Prophesying In Hope.” The flood has swirled around Paragraphs 24.1 and 24.2 or “Impeachment” -- and little else.
A fractured tainted opposition desperately wanted holy water sprinkled on it’s second bid to impeach President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. They didn’t get it.
“Impeachment will once again serve as an unproductive political exercise”, given bitter partisan mindsets and skewed rules, the prelates wrote.
A corrupt cynical administration scrounged for absolution that’d close political legitimacy questions. They didn’t get it either.
In Paragraph 23, the bishops insisted : “Elections in 2007 must not be cancelled”. A democracy “preserves the prerogative of evaluating those charged with governing, and in replacing them when they do not fulfill their functions satisfactorily...”
“No El”, however, underpins the regime’s bid to stay in power until 2010 – and beyond. As a constituent assembly, incumbent legislators would write themselves into Parliament for three more years. They’d vest the President with “Marcosian” powers: from appointing 30 parliamentarians to overseeing the Prime Minister.
“We do not support hasty efforts to change the fundamental law... without widespread citizen participation, total transparency and relative serenity that allows for rational discussion,” the pastoral says. And that task “is best done through a Constitutional Convention”
“Constitutional change must be based on the common good rather than on self-serving interests or the interest of political dynasties,” they add. The pastoral does not mention the administration’s farcical “People’s Initiative”. But hey, you can connect the dots. No?
Many of us, in media, often flail away on basis of broadcast sound bytes or condensed newspaper reports. Few of us plow through the full text of major documents, be it a budget, academic thesis or pastoral.
Deadlines leave us little time, we bleat. That pathetic dodge does not wash. Our glut of patchy reporting and shallow comment sell our readers and listeners short. “Superficiality is the bane of our craft”.
Few of us bothered to secure, let alone read, the full text of the CBCP pastoral. Yet, it’s only eight pages short. That’s a pity. Because the pastoral deals with other equally searing national issues.
We see this “in the faces of poor people, confused by complex issues beyond their control,” the 89 assembled prelates note in the introduction. “With a sad feeling of debilitating hopelessness, they wonder when the seemingly endless political battles in Manila would ever give way to the pressing problems of their daily economic struggles. They (ask) if their deepening impoverishment would ever find a unified political response?”
Consider “Extra Judicial Killings”. Paragraph 26 states that “salvaging” is far more widespread than many suspect. A “great number of extra-judicial killings sometimes do not come to light in the newspapers,” the bishops write. “But ( they )are known to us in our dioceses”.
Faith-based opposition to murder is of “long standing”. That is the pastoral’s understatement. The Fifth Commandment came down from Mount Sinai. It antedates, by six to seven thousand years, today’s “outcry of those who denounce the increasing number of journalists and social activists”, supposedly instigated by “ultra-rightist elements in the military”.
“We join this outcry,” the bishops said. “But we can not close our eyes...to killings, reported by our people, as allegedly perpetrated by insurgents for various reasons, as such agaw-armas operations, the failure to pay a revolutionary tax or “blood debt to the people”.
The pastoral does not mention the Communist Party, Bayan Muna and other fronts or party-list representatives. But hey, you can connect the dots. No?
“These we also unequivocally denounce,” the letter says. “The defense of human rights and human dignity must itself be just. It has to be impartial, irrespective of religious belief or ideology.”
Paragraph 28 onwards raises tough, troubling questions : “Are we really without hope as a people?...Has “the fact of our being Christians made our society more peaceful, more fraternal, more just?
It’d be easy to “answer no -- if we focus only on the many critical problems that plague Philippine society. So far, ( these ) have been intractable to any satisfying solution. And because of the suffering they cause, we give way to a deepening sense of helplessness...”
But “away from the limelight and glare of publicity”, there is far different -- and more hopeful -- picture.
Lay men and women, along with priests and religious, “quietly put into practice what they understand Christian social concern means”, whether that be battling usury, unjust contracts, endemic graft to improving nutritional status of children.
In election affairs “non-partisan groups, like Kapatiran and “One Voice”...especially to be commended and encouraged”.
What gives hope for a more just society tomorrow are ordinary citizens who do their duties with extraordinary fidelity, the pastoral notes.. It does not say our politicians, left right and center, are inutile. But hey, you can connect dots. No?
(E-mail: juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph )
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New DepEd chief is a creative manager
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ONE common vein we noted among critics of the new Education Secretary, Tarlac Congressman Jesli Lapus, is that they never fail to acknowledge that he is a management expert, before launching on their negative assessment that he is a political animal.
Their common plaint is that all the cumulative defects which plague the department have been caused by politicians. They overlook the fact that to be able to attain the level of public service which Lapus has done, it is practically inevitable that he must be a politician in the politically charged Philippine environment.
But being a politician and being a management expert are not mutually exclusive. In fact, in the art of governance, this could be a lucky combination.
We had the fortune of working as an insurance consultant in the Land Bank during the time when Lapus was its president. And subsequently, he was our chair when we served as president of the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation under President Fidel V. Ramos. During those stints in public service, two words stuck to our mind as an apt description of the kind of manager Secretary Lapus was: a creative manager.
When Lapus was elected to Congress, we continued for a while to help him out and was further exposed to his managerial style. One area where we assisted was in the field of banking.
He was principal author of the bill that was passed into law reforming the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. and upping the coverage of bank deposits to its present level. It was his version, the House version essentially, which was legislated ultimately. Then there was the teachers lending reform in the education department which was incorporated into a resolution to alleviate the financial situation of the public mentors.
Among the latest criticisms, mention was made of a cattle-raising project Lapus initiated at Land Bank. We don’t know if the project did lose money, but granting that it did, that was just one single program. Against the unprecedented growth and profitability the bank enjoyed under Secretary Lapus, that single project, if it did fail, paled in comparison to the many successes the institution experienced under him.
For the farmers who were served by the PCIC, under our term, the bank under in term gave full support. Lapus gave us full encouragement when we started to change the paradigm of PCIC to turn its operations around from constant losses to profitability by expanding its market to include agricultural assets, both public and private.
Unfortunately, the program was cut short with a change in administration. As a presidential appointee, we resigned and those who came after us lacked private insurance experience to appreciate the change in program. Secretary Lapus, being profit-oriented, grasped and supported the proposed marketing thrust. We believe its implementation would have ended the continued losses of the corporation.
The critic also made fun of the private sector experience of “selling bras and panties”. We believe he was referring to Secretary Lapus’ managing exposure to Triumph, a highly successful marketing venture. Having ourselves undergone selling experience practically all our life, we have always been awed by successfull selling ventures.
We know how challenging and demanding this type of work is. It should never be looked down.
In his various dialogues with the media, Lapus gave recognition to some serious problems he would be facing as he assumes his new post. He talks of the serious financial challenges the department faces. He speaks of financial engineering.
In the present Congress that is bowing out, he was entrusted with the critical post of ways and means committee chair. He helped draw up and piloted through the legislative process the VAT law.
With full realization of the global market demands upon Philippine labor, he sees the necessity of returning English as the principal medium of instruction in our schools. It is Lapus’ market orientation at work.
There is a budding controversy over the teaching of sex education in the schools.
He pledges to mediate and arrive at a win-win solution between the Church which opposes the sex education thrust and those who favor it. We are sure he would help the two sides come up with a creative proposal to end the dispute.
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USCIS’ memo on affidavit of support
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ON November 23, 2005, USCIS headquarters in Washington, D.C. issued a policy memorandum concerning affidavits of support (Form I-864), allowing a sponsor of an applicant applying for adjustment of status to submit his tax returns for only the most recent year, rather than for each of the three previous tax years. This will be a tremendous benefit to sponsors, as now they need only one tax return (for the current tax year), rather than having to submit tax returns for the previous three years.
By way of background, the law requires that in all family-based petition cases (as well as for some employment-based cases, where certain relatives own at least 5% of the petitioning company) the petitioner submit an affidavit of support and copies of his tax returns for the past three years. This new memo changes existing USCIS policy regarding the affidavit of support (Form I-864) in the following respects:
1. The petitioner/sponsor need only submit his/her most recent federal income tax return, in connection with any adjustment of status application (Form I-485) filed on or after the date of the memo (November 23, 2005). For example, if the sponsor signed the affidavit of support after April 15, 2005, only the sponsor’s 2004 federal income tax return would be required.
2. This rule (requiring only the most recent tax return) applies not only to the petitioning sponsor, but also to any substitute or joint sponsor signing a Form I-864 for an adjustment of status case.
3. For any adjustment of status application filed before the date of the memorandum, the sponsor should have filed the three most recent income tax returns. However, given the change of policy, adjudicators are no longer required to issue a request for evidence (RFE) for the missing earlier tax returns, and instead can adjudicate the case based on the most recent tax return.
4. In lieu of a tax return, USCIS officers shall also accept an IRS-generated transcript of the taxpayer’s income tax return as a true and correct “copy” of the sponsor’s tax return. (The IRS will, without charge, issue to a taxpayer a transcript of the taxpayer’s income tax return if the taxpayer files an IRS Form 4506T.) If an IRS transcript is submitted, it will not be necessary for USCIS to request any missing forms W-2 or 1099.
5. If the sponsor’s tax return demonstrates that the sponsor’s current income is at least 125% above the Poverty Guidelines, then the affidavit of support is sufficient, and the officer does not need to request any further evidence. The adjudicator should request additional evidence (i.e., employment letters, pay stubs, or other financial data from the sponsor) only if the sponsor’s tax returns reflects income below the Poverty Guidelines.
6. The affidavit of support is required at the time of the filing for adjustment of status. Previously, the USCIS allowed the submission of the affidavit of support, at the time of the adjustment of status interview. This memo states that the affidavit of support should be filed along with the adjustment of status application.
Please also note that the law requires that not only must the petitioner submit an affidavit of support in all cases (even if the petitioner is elderly, retired, has no money, etc.), but the petitioner must also be domiciled (or living) in the U.S. If an elderly Tatay has petitioned his adult children, but has since relocated to the Philippines, the parent would not be in a position to submit the affidavit of support. In such a case, a visa would not be issued.
Please also note that this policy memorandum deals with adjustment of status interviews in the U.S., and may not yet apply to applicants being processed for their visas at the U.S. Embassy. In those cases where people are being processed at the Embassy, the sponsor’s three most recent tax returns may still be required, until further notice.
Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 25 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
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(This is for informational purposes only, and reflects the firm’s opinions and views on general issues. Each case is different and results may depend on the facts of a particular case. All immigration services are provided by an active member of the State Bar of California and/or by a person under the supervision of an active member of the State Bar. No prediction, warranty or guarantee can be made about the results of any case.Should you need or want legal advice, you should consult with and retain counsel of your own choice.)
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