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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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NOW that the shopping frenzy is through, it is time for us to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. Years of commercialism has made us lose sight of what Christmas is all about: It is about peace, love and hope.
Giving gifts is nice, no doubt it. But Big Business got us into believing that at Christmas time, we should all be rushing to the stores and buy gifts. But giving need not be expressed through gifts either in kind or in cash. For the true spirit of Christmas is not commercial, but spiritual.
A simple reflection will remind us of the simple message of the Christmas story. The birth of Jesus was meant to bring peace on Earth, as the angels sang. His coming was an act of love, of God’s love toward mankind. The nativity was meant to bring mankind hope.
Our homeland has been ravaged by decades-old wars on at least two fronts. Filipinos are fighting fellow Filipinos in an armed conflict, our Muslim brothers are up in arms demanding to secede. The government’s already scant resources that could have been better spent for the welfare of the poor majority in our country are being siphoned off to fight these wars.
Why not be an instrument of peace? Devote time and talent to efforts to bring about lasting peace in the Philippines.
There is too much hatred in our native land. Political leaders bicker everyday. The government fights back and shows disdain to any form of dissent, even legitimate ones. The poor have no love for the government, bearing the grudge that their government has forsaken them.
Why not be a messenger of love? Work with like-minded compatriots in resolving political differences in our country.
More than 90 percent of our people live below the poverty line. Most of them have lost hope that someday life would be kinder to them.
Why not be a bringer of hope? Give time and effort in helping alleviate the plight of the least of our brethren. Work on eradicating poverty in the Philippines.
Indeed, the best way to celebrate Christmas is to live out the very message of Jesus’ coming. And that is to give peace, love and hope.
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ITALY --- As I watched news of New York City bus and subway workers on strike Tuesday morning, TV news programs showed footages of a throng of commuters walking to their places of work in Manhattan in a cold weather.
It was in the spring of 1980 when the transit union last staged its job stoppage that also affected millions of commuters - a time when information technology was barely in existence. Although I survived it then - walking to work and deciding first, to stay at a hotel, then finally, bunking at a colleague’s apartment - I don’t know how I would have managed the experience this time around.
Had I been in New York this time, perhaps I would not be walking to work but telecommuting, using all the conveniences that modern technology offers. Nonetheless, although my absence there may prove less worrisome, work here has its own version of pressing moments.
For instance, Italy’s government is bent on passing new laws changing the powers and management of the Bank of Italy after Monday’s resignation of Antonio Fazio, the governor since 1993. He quit after being placed under criminal investigation following a banking scandal. His position became untenable after the arrest of Gianpiero Fiorani, a banker and friend of the governor is accusing of running a large criminal network.
When I arrived one early morning in Rome last week, Filipinos were aplenty. And as I smiled at them, like some New Yorkers we see often at the New York’s Port Authority on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, they were not gracious in returning a smile. Instead, they were cold and stood steadfastly waiting for a train to come by.
However, a Filipino taxi driver approached me and asked if I wanted to take his cab to go to Rome. I was glad about his offer but when I asked for the cost of the fare, he quoted an amount, which was rather steep compared to current taxi rates. I cautiously declined the offer and told him that I was taking the train, which cost only about 10 euro (equivalent to about $14).
Had his fare been the same or just a little bit over the prevailing rate, I would have not hesitated to take a ride in his cab and enjoyed his company on the way to Rome. Who knows, I could have known more about Filipinos on this side of the world.
The 30-minute express train trip to Termini Stazione (similar to Grand Central Station) in Rome was smooth notwithstanding the condition of the train as compared to New York’s Long Island Rail Road trains. It wasn’t exactly a sight-seeing experience but from the train window, I noted that graffiti was quite prevalent in most places that we passed by. Worn-down old buildings, which I believe were empty, were also in a number of towns; this was much like South Bronx in the mid-70s.
In some places, it was a contrast of old and new buildings; of Romanesque and Baroque art and modern architecture; and of constricted, barren and brown earth and wide, open, green landscape.
As soon as I got off the train, I felt the vibrancy of Rome - similar to Grand Central Station-- when I first took the train from the upstate town of Valhalla on my trip New York City. Hotels were all over the place but I lost the paper that had the phone number and the direction to the hotel I was booked in.
Talk of the availability of telephone directory in stores, there was none. Besides if you don’t speak Italian, it could really be challenging. You have no other recourse but to use sign language (which may also pose some problems); not even the polizia could help. I knew the hotel was a few blocks away from Termini but because I didn’t remember the street it was on, finding the place was really difficult. I vowed to re-learn the Boy Scout’s motto: Be Prepared.
Two Filipinos - Peter and Marlene - who have been in Italy for more than 10 years, helped me out. He spoke to a telephone directory attendant in fluent Italian and took all the information he could get to give them to me. It turned out that the hotel was within two blocks away from where I met them. Before that, because it was early morning, he even treated me to a taste of a double cappuccino at a nearby café bar.
This experience changed my first impression about Filipinos when I was at the airport. It proved that first impression isn’t always right and doesn’t always last; it requires patience and understanding to know them well - even in far away places such as Rome.
Rome is not as clean and not as safe as I thought it would be. The presence of graffiti in almost all places I’ve been to is very much similar to New York City when I first arrived in the late 70’s.
Together with three colleagues, we decided to be adventurous and took the subway going to the Vatican. Rome’s subway also has its similarities to the then New York that I saw where its trains are likewise old - chugging along every train stop -- with hardly an audible public address system.
The subway trip was distressing to one of us. On a cool, crisp and sunny Sunday morning, the Metro L line train going to the Vatican was packed with local residents and tourists. The train ride was like a trip on morning and afternoon rush hours in New York. Again, I met another Filipino who warned us to be wary of pickpockets who prey on subway passengers.
Midway through St. Peter’s Basilica train stop, my colleague found out his wallet was missing. We immediately suspected the two guys who stood behind us that asked questions relentlessly and another guy who stood in front of my friend who lost his bill. We concluded that the guy asking questions was actually distracting our attention as we tried to respond to his queries.
This unfortunate episode did not deter us from visiting the Vatican and other historical places in Rome and other cities in Italy. Once a magnificent, cultural, financial, and a powerful, political capital of the world, it now is reduced to just another European tourist destination.
True, it has a rich history of everything that can be shared with all peoples of the world similar to that of New York City and perhaps to other great cities as well. But Rome, for all its glory and might, is understandably an old city, which existed even before the birth of Jesus Christ. It is a city where many stories have been told and re-told from the beginning of time.
My travel experience in Rome is not only about a tale of a city, which someday will fill a page or two in my book of journeys, but also about meeting Filipinos in diaspora. It is certainly an impression, which does not easily fade nor is it easily forgotten.
Just like a tale of a great city.
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Schwarzenegger: From Grinch to Santa Claus
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Chicago, ILLINOIS --- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has shed his role last Thursday (Dec. 8) as the Grinch who almost stole Christmas of Filipino World War II veterans living in his state. After suffering from several political setbacks at home last month, the ghost of Christmas past appeared to have haunted the muscleman-turned politician when he realized he could not afford to alienate a block of California voters -- Filipino Americans -- and relented to help push the cause of the aging veterans.
From Enemy to Ally
In a rare role reversal, Schwarzenegger turned himself into an ally of the aging veterans when he wrote President Bush to support the “Filipino Veterans Equity Act” (that) “would eliminate gaps in coverage, ensure all Filipino veterans receive the same benefits available to American veterans (and) give these veterans their long overdue recognition and benefits they deserve.”
Eric Lachica, a lobbyist for the cause of Filipino Veterans, said Schwarzenegger became one of the two Republican leaders who marked the 64th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II who stepped forward to champion the veterans’ campaign to win full U.S. recognition and VA pensions next year.
Rep. Darrrell Issa (R-Ca.- 49th) pledged in a meeting with ten visiting leaders of several veterans that he would re-introduce next week the new “Filipino Veterans Equity Act” and work for its passage in Congress next year following the resignation recently by Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Ca.-50th), who re-introduced the H.R. 302 last year.
Alfredo Diaz, 89, a New Jersey veteran coordinator, thanked Schwarzenegger and Issa for breathing life into H.R. 302. Diaz is a former marathon runner, a defender in the Battle for Bataan who escaped from the Death March in 1942.
Grateful to Issa.
Another veteran leader Pat Ganio, Sr., 84, also thanked Issa by presenting him with a DVD video history of their ten-year campaign to pass the Equity bill.
On December 15, the coalition representatives in Washington will present a copy of Governor Schwarzenegger’s letter to VA Secretary Jim Nicholson urging President Bush to support the Equity bill with a budget for monthly pensions.
Shortly after Schwarzenegger took office, the governor wanted to eliminate the State Supplementary Program (SSP) payment of about $225 per month earmarked by the California state legislature to each eligible Filipino American World War II veteran since 2000, which they can take home to the Philippines. Combining the SSP with federally funded Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the Filipino American World War II veterans in California can receive a minimum of $790 a month.
Fortunately for the 1,700 Filipino American World War II veterans, the Democratic Party-dominated California legislature rejected the proposal of the new Republican governor “eliminating the California Veterans Cash Benefit program.”
Vetoed Veterans Contributions
Later, the California chief executive has vetoed Assembly Bill 2512, which encourages school districts to include in their history classes the story of the contributions of Filipino soldiers in World War II, saying he respected the intention to honor “the phenomenal contributions” of Filipino troops, but that the bill wasn’t needed.”
After his special-election agenda was soundly rejected by voters last month, the Republican governor reached out to the opposition by appointing a top Democrat, Susan Kennedy, as his new chief of staff, launching what wags say as the “third phase of his administration: back to the future.” He earned high approval ratings during his first year when he mostly cooperated with Democrats and pursued centrist policies.”
I hope this transformation of Mr. Schwarzenegger from Grinch to Santa Clause becomes contagious so that it reaches the hearts and minds of President Bush and the US Congress to finally grant the Christmas wish of the Filipino veterans - the passage of the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill next year.
Merry Christmas to all!
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Christmas in a Tondo hospice
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WHAT has a hospice, on a humid Tondo side road, got to do with “A Christmas Carol”, the 1843 classic that Charles Dickens wrote from ideas gathered during night strolls through cold London streets?
We were in Manila’s Tondo district just to hand over a letter for a member of the Missionary of Charity sisters, which was founded by Mother Teresa. But in the star-lantern-festooned front yard, one bumped into Dickens’ world of Christmases past, present and yet to come.
About 25 kids, from 3 to 8 years of age, milled around. In blue-lined sari habits, three nuns were filling, with medicine, bottles thrust forward by scrawny prematurely wrinkled mothers.
“Tuberculosis,” explained Sr. Rose Magdalene. “Poverty runs deep here.” TB spreads like brushfire in slum homes on short food rations and shoddy sanitation. Reminds you of Bob Crachit who was underpaid 15 shillings a month by Ebenezer Scrooge.
It’s one thing to run your finger down statistical tables and note that TB afflicts 540 out of every 100,000 Filipinos. (It’s 120 for Malaysians.) But it’s gut-wrenching to see that statistic etched into a 3-year-old’s pinched features.
These are “immortal creatures, condemned without alternative or choice, to tread paths of jagged flints and stones by brutal ignorance” and an avaricious elite, the 31-year-old Dickens told the Manchester Atheneum. By then, he had the novels “Oliver Twist” and “David Copperfield” under his belt.
Yet, “Christmas is the only time I know of, in the long calendar year, when men and women seem, by one consent, to open their shut-up hearts freely,” he wrote.
Even those flush with cash “think of people below them, as if they were really fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”
Dickens wove that theme into “A Christmas Carol.” And it resounded as Sister Carisima led us through various Spartan wards that had been scrubbed clean by nuns and volunteers. “No odor, sir, so unlike our public hospitals,” murmured our driver.
“But you should see these early mornings,” the nun replied while gently adjusting the blanket of the comatose patient, picked up earlier from a hovel. “Some are wet and move in their beds,” she explained, stroking the man’s forehead. “It takes time to clean up.”
Did Blessed Teresa of Calcutta ingrain into her daughters the gift of understatement? That formation shapes 19 young women, from Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines, now novices in this house. As professed nuns, they have committed their lives to healing the victims in a society of padlocked hearts.
In the women’s ward, Sister Carisima pushed back stray locks on a sleeping aged woman and patted the patient’s hand in the next bed. “Iniwan sa kalsada” [abandoned on the street], she explained. Three beds away was the woman with face seared by acid, splashed on by an abusive husband.
In the next room, a woman sat talking to herself, endlessly folding a handkerchief. “She’s a rape victim, so traumatized, she screams when touched,” the nun explained. “We have other victims of violence here.”
In the open space, 20 aged patients were being fed. And in a large hall, three young sisters led students packing Christmas packets of rice, soap, some sugar and food items, saying the rosary as they worked. “These sisters just made their vows,” Sister Carisima explained. “One will be returning to Korea soon,” she said.
In Missionary of Charity houses in Binondo, Cebu, Aklan, Calbayog, Davao and other places, Mother Teresa nuns go from house to house. They pinpoint the dirt poor who’ll get these small packages. “In every act of kindness, you come face to face with God,” Teresa of Calcutta taught.
As in Dickens’ time, our social order is one where jewels, luxury gas-guzzlers and bank accounts, padded by graft, gauge self-worth. So, these packets are nothing to that illegal logger who lighted his cigar with P100-bills. Coco-levy magnates or Lichtenstein-numbered bank account holders would sniff at them. Ask Imelda.
And what would these efforts mean for Virgilio Garcillano and Samuel Ong with their patent lies, their equally tainted backers and probers? And rouge military wiretappers? Is their business “bound on other journeys”?
“You were always a good man of business,” Scrooge told the ghost of his former partner Jacob Marley. “Business?” wailed the Christmas past wraith, shaking his manacles. “Mankind was my business...mercy, forbearance, benevolence was all my business.”
Christmas today comes, as it did 2,000 years ago, to a society where the political, economic and military elites seek only to conserve their loot. Herod and Tiberius Ceasar -- and Scrooge -- did as much. Few share out their creativity, time and possessions to enable those of skimpy means and confined horizons to rise to “sunlit plains” of humane lives.
A thin crust of Scrooges tosses up leaders equally blind. Few have the insight to see that the poor have as much right as to what is available to the rich. They act as if sharing with the less fortunate is “humbug.”
If we “open our shut-up hearts freely,” we’ll discover they’re “hard as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster,” Jonathan Powers writes in “Scrooge Is Here.”
“Give love on Christmas Day,” the car radio blared on our way back. But Christmas past, present and to come, blend into one for those who daily serve the crushed and the broken. “And they found the Child, with Mary his mother,” the ancient story goes.
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Christmas in the Philippines
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Recently , I went to the Philippines to tape some episodes of the TFC immigration talk show, Citizen Pinoy. During the taping of Citizen Pinoy, I was touched by the audience's participation and enthusiasm. Filipinos came all the way from Bicol, Mindoro, Dagupan, and lined up as early as 5:30 am, waiting in line for several hours, just to be able to narrate their situations or seek answers to their immigration questions.
While I was in Manila, I was also able to experience the Filipino way of celebrating the holiday season. The coming of the "ber" months (September, October, November, December) signals the start of the holiday season. Even though it was only early November, Christmas carols are played on all radio stations. Stores are decorated with various holiday themes, and the malls are full of early holiday shoppers. Many "barangays" were already beaming with Christmas lights and huge lanterns ("parols"). The "parols" made of bamboos and shells along Vito Cruz in Makati, and Gilmore in Mandaluyong, were especially beautiful. In fact, I bought several parols, which are now hanging in my office. I am sure most Filipinos feel homesick at the sight of those flashing parols.
Christmas is celebrated by every Filipino wherever he may be. The feeling of homesickness and nostalgia are felt more during the Christmas season by those who are away from the Philippines and their families.
My heart goes out to those of you who, because of your immigration problems, are away from your family at this time of the year, and cannot leave the U.S. to even visit them. I know how much you want to be with your family, to spend the holidays in the Philippines. That is why it is truly rewarding for me when I am able to help a client legalize his status. Almost, without exception, their first thoughts are to spend Christmas with their family. The media noche or noche buena, simbang gabi and the magnificent street fireworks on New Year's Eve are the things that make the Filipino Holiday season truly unforgettable and remarkable.
As the year comes to an end, I continue my commitment to you and your family - "To Help you make your American Dream come true and Bring your family together".
On behalf of my Filipina wife, Millie, and my staff, " MALIGAYANG PASKO AND MASAGANANG BAGONG TAON SA INYONG LAHAT ".
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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