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For the past 21 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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Akaka (D-HI), U.S. Senate Chairman of Veterans’ Affairs Committee, does not expect President Bush to veto Senate Bill 1315 if it sails through the House of Representatives. Jesse Broder Van Dyke, press secretary of Senator Akaka, said “Senator Akaka hopes President Bush will sign the bill into law.”
Meanwhile, Michael Ortiz, spokesman of Senator Barack Obama, said that when Mr. Obama abstained from voting for the S. 1315, it was because Senator Obama “was assured that the vote would not be close.”
Mr. Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate, was one of the three senators, who abstained from voting for the S. 1315, which passed in the Senate by a decisive 96-1 votes. Obama was a co-sponsor of the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill when it was introduced as S. 57 by Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) last year. S. 1315 absorbed provisions of S. 57.
Ortiz said, “Senator Obama has actively supported this legislation and believes its passage will rightfully honor the service of the Filipinos who served alongside American service members during World War II. Given the broad support for this legislation from the Senate yesterday (April 24), the Senator was assured the vote would not be close.”
Ortiz added, “However, if President Bush vetoes this important legislation, Senator Obama will work with Chairman Akaka and the Veterans Affairs Committee to override the veto and ensure the legislation is enacted into law.”
If all the senators who voted 96-1 for the S. 1315 will show up during the roll call, it will be more than enough to override President Bush’s veto. If all the 100 senators are present during the vote, the votes of 66 senators or two-thirds vote will be needed to override the veto. On the other hand, if all the 432 members of the House of Representatives are present during the vote, 285 votes or two-thirds votes of the House will be needed to override Bush’s veto.
During the last seven years that President Bush has been in office, he vetoed eight bills and only one was overridden and enacted into law – the H.R. 1495, the Water Resources Development Act of 2007. If passed, S. 1315 will overturn the Rescission Act of 1946, which took the grants of benefits away from the Filipino veterans for their services during World War II.
It was reported that the House of Representatives version of this bill, H.R. 760, is being calendared by Rep. Bob Filner (D-SD), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, for debate on the House floor to coincide with the 66th anniversary of the Fall of Corregidor on May 6th. If it passes the House, the bill will be sent to President Bush for his signature.
There are an estimated 2,700 Filipinos living in the Philippines who are receiving an “average disability compensation of $9,600 annually” but they will not benefit from the passage of S. 1315 anymore. Only the estimated 14,200 Filipinos living in the Philippines, who have not received any benefits, will be granted a flat rate of $ 3,600 annual non-service disability pension for single Filipino veterans living in the Philippines, $ 4,500 annually for married veterans, and $ 2,400 annually for surviving spouses under S. 1315. These rates “would be increased annually by a cost-of-living adjustment.”
At present, there is a Philippine law, barring “receipt of Philippine government benefits for persons who receive a monetary benefit from the United States.” For the benefits from S. 1315 to take effect, the Philippines should repeal this law.
When Ambassador Willy C. Gaa, Philippine Ambassador to the United States, testified before the U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last year, Mr. Gaa expressed his government’s support “for changing this Philippine law so that the Philippine grants would be continued if the VA (Veterans Administration) pension benefits were granted” by S. 1315.
When President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wrote President Bush a letter last April 5, 2007, assuring Mr. Bush that “we will continue to provide these veterans with pension benefits and medical care even after the legislation is passed by the United States granting pension” based on S. 1315, these new beneficiaries of the U.S. pension will also be beneficiaries of pension that will be passed under the Arroyo Administration.
According to the Senate records, the U.S. Veterans Administration reported that as of September 2000, there were about 41,800 Filipino veterans living in the Philippines and were not receiving disability compensation. Based on the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), 30 percent of Filipino veterans are married. Using VA mortality rates for pensioners, U. S. Congressional Budget Office estimates that under S. 1315, there are about 14,200 Filipino veterans who would be granted a disability pension in 2008, of which 1,500 would survive to 2017. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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NEW YORK– Under the banners of BAYAN USA and the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), Filipinos in New York joined the scheduled May 1st mobilization in Union Square for immigrant rights and legalization for the undocumented. The action took place at 4pm starting with a rally at the historic Union Square in Manhattan. The Filipino contingent met in front of the Virgin Megastore along Union Square South and Broadway at 1:30pm. The action concluded with a march down Broadway to Foley Square.
For the past two years, Filipinos in New York have not only participated in, they have helped organize "May Day" actions for immigrant rights. Active and founding members of the New York May 1st Coalition for Immigrant Rights, BAYAN USA and NAFCON have done their part in rallying Filipino representation in these historic marches, the first of which ballooned into the largest mobilization in New York history back on May 1st, 2006.
Hundreds of Filipinos, the second largest immigrant community in the United States, marched down Broadway demanding legalization for all the undocumented, family reunification for immigrants, a scrapping of the immigration backlog, and worker rights for immigrant workers. Since then, conditions for immigrant workers have worsened, as now the Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE is enacting random checkpoints and raids on many immigrant families, including Filipinos.
"We cannot deny that the US immigration system has deep impact on the lives of nearly four million Filipinos in the US, one million of which remain undocumented," states BAYAN USA's Jonna Baldres. "If we don't demand that this broken system be positively reformed so that it recognizes all immigrants as human beings with inalienable rights, then we are accepting defeat against the capitalist monster."
The worsening living conditions for the Filipino people under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are also at play when forcing Filipinos to migrate out of their motherland to the United States.
"The truth is the extreme poverty, corruption, and now food crisis in the Philippines sends over 3000 Filipinos out of the Philippines daily. Many come to the US seeking decent lives and to support their loved ones back home. Among the demands they aired is an end to the ICE raids and deportations, which continue to intensify in the tri-state area. Many Filipinos have fallen victim to random checks by security forces in trains, buses, and other means of public transportation. Many more are rounded up, detained without due process, and deported back to the Philippines.
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CHICAGO -- A former U.S. Air Force enlisted man, who put up a trading firm that fraudulently transacted business with a family friend in the Philippines, was sentenced to 41 months in prison in connection with a $30-M scheme to defraud the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank) of the United States.
Laura E. Sweeney of the office of public affairs of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., said Monday (April 28) that Daniel Curran, 53, of Boynton Beach, Florida, was also sentenced last Wednesday, April 23, by Judge Richard W. Roberts of the U.S. District Court of Columbia to a three-year supervised release, forfeiture of his share of $140,000 of the $400,000 he received from the fraud to the United States and restitution of $23,156,828 to the Ex-Im Bank of the United States.
Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor of the District of Columbia said the “substantial assistance Curran provided to the government in its investigation and prosecution of others was taken into consideration at sentencing” for a “six-level” downward departure from level 28 (78-97 months) to level 22 (41-51 months) imprisonment.
Curran, an Irish American, pleaded guilty on June 8, 2007, to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and one count of mail fraud. As part of his plea, Curran, a former owner of Dankim Trading Corp., an exporting company located in Boynton Beach, admitted that from Oct. 2000 to June 2005, he acted as a purported “exporter” of approximately $30-M worth of fraudulent loan transactions, falsified documents sent to U.S. banks and to the Ex-Im Bank, and misappropriated approximately $24-M in loan proceeds.
Curran, admitted keeping approximately $400,000 of those proceeds and transferring approximately $23-M to bank accounts owned and controlled by a co-conspirator in the Philippines, Marilyn Ong, “who masterminded the scheme.”
Curran’s sentencing is part of a broader investigation into an $80 million scheme to defraud the Ex-Im Bank between November 1999 and December 2005. To date, six individuals – Curran, David Villongco, Edward Chua, Robert Delgado, Christina Song and Jaime Galvez – have pleaded guilty for their involvement in the fraud scheme.
Villongco was sentenced on Feb. 29, 2008, to 33 months in prison; Galvez was sentenced on Jan.7, 2008, to one year in prison; and Delgado was sentenced on Oct. 5, 2007, to two years in prison. In addition, four other individuals – Marilyn Ong, Ildefonso Ong, Nelson Ti and Joseph Tirona – have been indicted by a federal grand jury sitting in the District of Columbia for their alleged involvement in the scheme.
These cases are being investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Los Angeles Division and the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The cases are being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Hank Bond Walther of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Michael K. Atkinson, Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia.
Curran’s cooperation provided “critical information to investigators about the ‘inner workings’ of the scheme.” It also led to the investigation and prosecution of co-conspirator, Marilyn Ong, and others, including Galvez, whose JG International Freight Corporation was used by Curran as freight forwarder for the fraudulent loan transactions.
Born in Yonkers, New York, with one sister and two brothers, Curran married Mary Catherine Curran (formerly Seeto Ong), who is the niece of co-conspirator Marilyn Ong. He has two grown daughters. A U.S. Air Force freight traffic specialist for four years, he later worked as a Quality Assurance Manager for a New York plastic company for 11 years. In the last years of his employment in the plastic company, he opened DanKim Trading and began engaging in the fraudulent Ex-Im Bank scheme, which funded primarily his livelihood. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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