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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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THE Arroyo government was dealt a legal double whammy by the Supreme Court last week. The High Court came out with two decisions declaring that two of Arroyo orders were unconstitutional.
First, the Court said Arroyo’s Executive Order 464, which bars officials from the Executive branch from testifying in the Senate, violates the basic democratic principle of check-and-balance and transparency.
Still reeling from the legal slap, the Supreme Court stated in no uncertain terms that her administration’s policy of Calibrated Preemptive Response, which authorizes police to break up demonstrations and arrest protesters, “ has no place in our legal firmament and must be struck down as a darkness that shrouds freedom.”
Next week, the Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of another Arroyo creation: Proclamation 1017, which gives Arroyo martial law powers without actually declaring it. With the way the Supreme Court has been deciding on Arroyo’s orders, and with the obvious flaws in her controversial orders, it is almost a safe bet that the High Court would give Arroyo a third spanking.
What do all these suggest? One, that the President has been receiving bad advice from her legal advisers. Two, that these proclamations and executive orders, aside from being obviously flawed, reveal an authoritarian streak in the President that throws out any respect for the Constitution and for the people’s civil and democratic rights.
Sure, Mrs. Arroyo can and should fire whoever is giving her legal advice. But she cannot heap the blame on them. The onus is on her.
In most political meetings, the President tells her advisers what she wants, and instructs her advisers to craft the legal justifications for her political decisions. And it is the President who gives the final approval.
In short, all these attempts at extending the scope and reach of the presidency’s already vast powers start and end with Mrs. Arroyo.
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NEW YORK --- News of some 27 Filipino nurses filing a class action suit against their American recruiter and employers for not paying them salary, and for fraud and misrepresentation should serve notice to some Filipino recruiters we know in our area that are engaged in this practice.
However, unlike their counterpart, these low-life Filipino head hunters are not preying on nurses but Filipino domestic helpers or care-givers that are over-staying in the U.S. or newly arrived tourists that they know intend to stay here for good. With sweet promises of good money and other inducements, these recruits easily fall prey to their recruiter’s devious schemes.
Once a potential deal is in the offing, the enticement continues with more assurances of benefits just by joining their firm and working with them.
One promise is the potential of sending more money to their families back home. Another is becoming a permanent resident, making themselves – the recruiters -- a living example of a great transformation of what they were then into what they are now as being involved in the community.
Without hesitation, these recruits are convinced and accept a deal. They agree to stay in a house in Queens or in an apartment in Manhattan where their recruiters used to live; the same place that is utilized as an office. With four or five women staying in one place, their rent, undoubtedly, becomes affordable and a proof of their employer’s “compassion” and business sense.
An emotional bond between the two players is quickly established paving the way to turn a routine acquaintance into a blossoming friendship filled with apparent concern, appreciation, trust and sympathy for each other.
But that’s just for starters; here comes the line and sinker. With expenses eroding their meager funds to a low-level and their survival put to test, they put their fate into the hands of their recruiter. Since these recruits do not have any expectation other than a job, which their recruiters promised, they now become dependent and subservient to their recruiters.
Eventually, after a long wait, a promise becomes a reality. Clients are found and a job offer as a nanny, a domestic help or a care-giver finally comes. Or if the recruits have some skills or talents their recruiters can use, they are given odd jobs in speech or report writing, marketing and advertising, and sometimes, a “goffer” for them.
Some are even asked to clean their employer’s apartments or somebody else’s place. They learned later, however, that their services are considered “courtesy” or “hands-on training.” In other words, free, to their great dismay.
If they were paid, their fee is at a meager rate, which is way below minimum pay standard. Although they suspect that their recruiters charge their clients big bucks and are paid on time, they are nonetheless, content. Even if their pay comes in trickles, the relationship gives them some form of confidence and self-reliance.
Assured of income and a hope of finding the right person to marry or securing a green card through a “marriage of convenience” scheme, which their recruiters told them about, they continue to hang on to their dreams.
Until abuse by their recruiters persist and become obvious, the relationship starts to crumble and the recruits’ fear factor sets in.
One story has it that after these recruits have paid their rent, their recruiters failed to remit their payment to the landlord for more than three months. The situation left them (the recruits) vulnerable to be thrown out in the cold with nowhere to stay.
They knew nothing of the landlord until the day these recruits received a knock at their door. The landlord was looking for their recruiter, who the owner thought, was living with them. It turned out be another twisted manipulation of their recruiter, which forced them to look for another place to stay.
From one story to another, and another, more tales of abuse and arrogance, money-laundering, illegal recruitment, “fixed” marriages, fraud and other criminal acts -- worse than the 28 nurses complained about -- abound and continue to surface.
In the meantime, these recruiters – protected by a new whistle-blowers’ law – are no longer holding back their fear of being sent back to their home land. Just like what another whistle-blower did to a fake immigration lawyer that is now in jail, they are now emboldened to testify to the truth of the activities of their recruiters.
While these recruits realize that vengeance is not theirs, their long suffering in hardship and in shame under the hands of their fellow Filipino must come to an end. They claim that if only people knew about the truth of their low-life recruiters, their devious ways to earn a living, their greed for power and influence, and their unending flair for attention, they’ll be stunned.
The time has come, these recruits say, to put an end to all this fantasy of devious recruiters. They vowed not to stop until their recruiters are stripped of their U.S. permanent residency and sent back home.
You see, devious recruiters have a beginning. They also have an end. No matter how good they are in hiding behind their masks of pretension, their true colors will show.
Devious recruiters.
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“For many are called, but few are chosen.” -- Matthew 22:1-14
Chicago, ILLINOIS --- Except for Native American Indians, everybody else are immigrants in this United States.
But if it appears that the Republican-dominated Congress is giving “illegal aliens” a hard time assuming legal status, which is history repeating itself.
There is no doubt, the immigration laws in this country have been very exclusionary.
Following the passage of Amendment 14 in 1868 when civil rights and citizenship were granted to freed African American slaves, a series of Asian Exclusion Acts were passed in 1882, 1917 and 1934 barring citizenship and property ownership for Chinese (1882), Asian Indians (1917), Japanese (1924), and Filipinos (The Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934, cutting Filipino immigration to a quota of fifty persons per year, and all Filipinos in the United States were reclassified as ‘aliens.’)
I have a feeling that the first immigrants to this country – the Pilgrims – who were forced to come here to escape religious persecution in Europe must have taken the Biblical accounts to heart. They might have assumed that America was the Biblical Promised Land and that only the chosen people can live in it.
Picky requirements
That’s why when newcomers started coming in, the subsequent generations of the early settlers have been picky in admitting new immigrants. Examples, those who did not pass medical and legal inspections were returned to their countries of origin.
But when Congress realized that the US needs more immigrants to tame the vast territory, it started to undo the exclusionary laws. For instance, it passed The Magnuson Act in 1943. This law lifted the barriers to citizenship for most immigrants of Asian origin.
Then, it passed the McCarran-Walter Act (1952), which allowed for immigration into the United States based on ethnic quotas.
Later, Congress passed The Immigrant Act (1965), eliminating quotas, establishing new criteria for immigrants, removing ‘natural origins’ as the basis of American immigration, amending the 1952 McCarran-Walter Act.
This Act established seven preferences for Eastern Hemisphere quota immigrants: (1) unmarried adult sons and daughters of citizens; (2) spouses and unmarried sons and daughters of permanent residents; (3) professionals, scientists, and artists of “exceptional ability;” (4) married adult sons and daughters of U.S. citizens; (5) siblings of adult citizens; (6) workers, skilled and unskilled, in occupations for which labor was in short supply in the United States; and (7) refugees from Communist-dominated countries or those uprooted by natural catastrophe.
Since 1965, two million Asian quota immigrants, two million non-quota immigrants, and one million refugees outside the seventh preference have arrived.
Inadequate immigration laws
Because this 1965 law was deemed inadequate, Congress passed the Immigration Nationality Act in 1990, which increased an annual flexible cap on immigration of 700,000 in fiscal years 1992-94, and 675,000 thereafter.
But the 1990 law did not solve the backlog either. Hence, the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA) led by immigration lawyer Loida Nicolas Lewis has joined the nationwide clamor to introduce immigration reforms, among others, “a dramatic increase in immigration visa numbers, which will remove as soon as possible the backlog of family reunification that for many immigrant families, including Filipino families, resulted in more than 20 years of waiting time before they can join their petitioners here in the United States.”
The bill pending before the US Congress which addresses this backlog problem is H.R. 2092, known as the Save America Comprehensive Immigration Act of 2005 introduced in House by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18).
Join May 1 rally
On Monday, May 1, the international workers’ right day celebration, do join the Immigrant Labor, Human and Civil Rights Rally.
The Alliance of Filipinos for Immigrant Rights and Empowerment (AFIRE) will join other Asian American organizations in blocking passage of HR 4437, which will treat unlawful presence in the US a crime. AFIRE supports the Senate Bill No. 1033, the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act of 2005, introduced by Senators John McCain and Edward Kennedy that would allow some of the estimated 10-12 million illegal immigrants in the United States to get legal jobs and eventual citizenship.
Call Ms. Nerissa Nabua-Allegretti of the Fellowship for Filipino Migrants (at 224-381-6888) or Arnold de Villa (773-575-3561), AFIRE convenor in Chicago, if you want to join the rally Monday.
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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FOUR years of foot-dragging by Cebu City bureaucrats are causing an Ayala-led multinational consortium to consider junking investments for water in the country’s most parched metropolis.
Button-down Ayala Corp. is usually bland. But in the latest discussions between the decrepit Metro Cebu Water District (MWCD) and Ayala and Stateland Inc., it candidly states: “Potential co-investors... might withdraw from the project.”
Submitted in 2002, the Joint Venture Consortium proposal would funnel 50,000 cubic meters of water daily from Carmen to the city, a distance of 39 kilometers. Metro Cebu’s daily demand for water now exceeds 275,000 cubic meters. The MCWD provides only over 100,000 cubic meters, although it serves less than half of city households. It loses 38 percent of the water to theft and leakages.
City Hall can’t afford JVC-type projects. A quarter of its budget pays devaluation-bloated yen loans for Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s South Reclamation Project, which is water short.
No other credible investors are around. Investments for water “waned after publicized financial losses incurred in concession contracts in Manila, Jakarta and Latin America,” the Asian Development Bank notes. The ADB is convening 200 experts at the end of May to address this concern.
A consortium pullout would confirm findings by the “Philippine Cities Competitiveness” survey that among 13 metro cities, Cebu trailed at “ninth in responsiveness to business needs.” The cities of Davao, Makati, Marikina and Muntinlupa ranked ahead of Cebu, the Asian Institute of Management study added.
“Frogs do not drink up the pond in which they live,” an old Inca proverb says. “In Cebu City, the sustainable capacity of its small (180 sq km) aquifers has been exceeded 3.6 times, and 7.4 times in Mandaue,” studies by the USAID, Delft University and ADB show.
Water tables are slumping. E-coli bacteria from human and animal waste have shut down some wells. Others are turning brackish -- a sign that salt water is seeping into emptied aquifers.
“The saline water edge has penetrated three kilometers inland,” says the Water Resources Center which tracked salination since 1973. “It is moving at the rate of 100 to 150 meters per year.” Contamination now brushes against the foothills.
Osmeña’s administration “never worked its way through to a comprehensive urban policy,” the Cebu Daily News noted. “Water, garbage, land use and others remain policy black holes.”
Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and civil society got President Fidel Ramos to issue Proclamation 1074 to correct falsified maps because Osmeña couldn’t be bothered by the issue. His partisans dominate the MCWD.
The mayor stomps on dissent, compounding policy flaws. The city council is a “harem of eunuchs” unable to fiscalize. “What Osmeña wants, Osmeña gets,” GMA Network television commentator Bobby Nalzaro notes.
Trapped in this policy vacuum was the draft agreement on the JVC proposal. Negotiated over three years, it was anchored to the Dublin Conference Principle that water is an “economic good.” It becomes available when a “fair return” is ensured for investors.
In the fourth year of talks, a new set of MCWD consultants scuppered the draft agreement with new demands: decrease volume delivery to 42,000 cubic meters per day, scrap joint management rights in the event of a default by the MCWD, etc. “The voice is that of Jacob, but the hands are those of Esau.”
Time loss, inflation, and spreading aquifer damage, meanwhile, take their toll. The new conditions result in “a return on investment lower that what was approved by government,” the summary notes. So, has City Hall left this serious investor no other recourse but to pick up its marbles?
That’s Cebu, all right.
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The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei
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WE are one of about 40 million readers throughout the world who have read Dan Brown’s fictional magnum opus and bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code” (soon to be a movie starring Tom Hanks). And we once spent time (about two years) in the trenches of Opus Dei, described in a recent issue of Time magazine as a “powerful, ultraconservative Roman Catholic faction riddled with sadomasochistic ritual”.
“The Da Vinci Code” focused on Opus Dei in what some described as harsh mythical light.
Time magazine devoted several spreads on Opus Dei out of interviews granted by the group’s officials in order to clarify disinformation about them written in the book.
“The Da Vinci Code” is also under heavy criticism from the Catholic Church. The Church attacks Brown for his radical version of Jesus Christ’s life which Catholics consider shockingly heretical. For one, Brown portrays Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene as husband and wife.
We were working in Manila as chief operating officer of an insurance company when we were invited by a friend, a bank vice president, to become a “cooperator” of Opus Dei.
We probably were caught in the Opus Dei radar while attending a periodic seminar on the Philippine economy conducted by the Center for Research and Communication or CRC, organized and run by the group.
A cooperator is a non-member that supports The Work of God, or simply the Work (as Opus Dei is sometimes called) through prayer, volunteer work or financial contribution.
After a few months, our sponsor told us we would become a “supernumerary”, the less formal category of membership which allows people to have families and live in their homes. Time Magazine writes that above the supernumerary come the “associate” and the “numerary”, both of whom are obliged to take the vow of celibacy and to practice the most rigorous spiritual program including corporal punishment. They live in Opus Dei community houses. “The Da Vinci Code” describes the use of the “cilice”, a spiked chain tied around the upper thigh two hours a day as a form of penance. Opus Dei observes the segregation of the sexes.
By the time we were promoted to a supernumerary, we had been requested to follow some form of tithing by pledging and paying a sum regularly to support The Work. This was easy enough.
What made us consider leaving The Work was the growing time pressure to attend to the spiritual program while attending to our livelihood. At that point, we were not only chief executive officer of our original company, but also CEO of two other corporations.
As a supernumerary, we were attending a weekly “cell” meeting with about 10 members, mostly executives and businessmen. We met in the office of the chairman of a large government bank. An insurance who owned his own company was guiding us in bible study. There was also a bigger monthly gathering where an Opus Dei priest celebrated holy Mass in a private chapel located in a Makati building owned by a wellknown Catholic Chinese tycoon, presumably a cooperator or supernumerary.
The altar of the chapel was impressively ornate and glittered with what we suspected were goldplated sacristy tabernacle and candleholders, chalice and paten. We thought these rich appointments were because the chapel was owned by a wealthy member. However, we were told it was the practice of Opus Dei to To lavish all of their altars.
To illustrate the value Opus Dei gives to the eucharistic celebration, we recall the story told to us by a retreat master about a man who was always in a hurry. After receiving holy communion, the man would almost forego the rest of the Mass and run off to his next appointment.
One time, he was surprised when as he went out of the church, two fellow members one on each side escorted him out on the street. He asked why. One escort replied, “Within the next few minutes, you will be carrying the body of the Lord in your mouth undissolved. We are making sure nothing happens to you until your body absorbs the host.”
Then there were the quarterly days of spiritual recollection, a mini-version of the semi-annual closed retreat held for two days at the beautiful and serene Opus Dei retreat house in Mount Makiling, Laguna. Our job takes us out of the country often and when Opus Dei learned of a coming trip, our sponsor would faithfully give us a list of locations abroad where we could attend spiritual functions of The Work.
On Oct. 2, 1928, a Spanish priest, Father Josemaria Escriva, founded Opus Dei as a movement of pious laypeople who would, by prayerful contemplation and the dedication of their labor to Christ, extend the holiness of church on Sunday into their everyday work life. Worldwide it counts with 85,500 members and in the US 3,000.
Its 1950 constitution barred members from revealing their membership without permission. This secrecy was discarded in 1982. Its secret nature, however, persisted as a rumor, helped no doubt by the success of members in getting themselves appointed in governments, notably in Spain under Franco.
In the Philippines, we knew and met one Secretary of Finance who was, we believe, a numerary. The present Manila government has at least one Cabinet member. There surely must be others. They are also scattered in the private sector.The impression is that they are everywhere spreading their spirituality. Hence, someone calls the group Octopus Dei.
The wealth of the Opus Dei is another subject of rumor. And its influence in the Vatican. Its founder Fr. Escriva was sainted after 17 years of his death. Others have to wait hundreds of years.
In the Philippines, they own the University of Asia and the Pacific. Philippine officials relate when they decide to go to a missionary area, they send two or three members with nothing but prayers. After several years, they find the prayers have grown to a bustling and influential community.
We never reached the level beyond supernumerary, so we had no first hand knowledge about the “silice” or the cat o’ nine tails members reportedly use to whip their back as a form of mortification. But we can understand the Catholic concept of penance. We can guess the truth about the vow of celibacy. But the serial murders mentioned in Brown’s book, committed by the albino Silas, an assasin let loose by Opus Dei against enemies of the Church? Bunk!
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Separate petitions for each immediate kin
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DEAR Atty. Gurfinkel: While I was still an immigrant, I filed a petition for my spouse and minor children in the F-2A category (spouse and/or minor children of green card holder). My understanding is that all of my family members were covered by that single petition.
I later took the oath of citizenship, and am being told that my petition for my family now covers only my spouse and not my children.So, I need to file new, separate petitions for each of my kids. Since all my family members were previously covered under my F-2A petition, why do I need to now file separate petitions for my kids? Very truly yours, L.D.
Dear L.D.: By law, a green card holder needs only file one F-2A petition to cover several family members, such as a spouse (who is the “principal” beneficiary) and all minor children (who are “derivative” beneficiaries).
However, when the green card holder naturalizes, the F-2A petition automatically converts from F-2A (spouse/minor child of green card holder) to immediate relative (spouse/parent/child of U.S. citizen).That conversion changes the classification of the spouse and children to the status of “immediate relatives”. According to the Foreign Affairs Manual, the Immigration and Nationality Act “does not generally accord derivative status for family members of immediate relatives as it does for preference applicants ... A U.S. citizen must file separate immediate relative petitions for the spouse, each child, and each parent.”In other words, petitions by U.S. citizens of immediate relatives (spouse, minor child, parents) allow only one beneficiary per petition. Derivatives are not allowed.
In your case, when you became a U.S. citizen, only your spouse (as the principal beneficiary) remained under your original petition, since only one immediate relative can be covered by a petition by a U.S. citizen.Your children, as F-2A derivative beneficiaries, “dropped off” that petition. Therefore, you must now file new petitions, one for each of your children, so that they, too, will again be “under petition”.
I know of one case where an immigrant had petitioned his wife and three kids, under one petition. The priority date in the F-2A category (green card holder petitioning spouse and minor children) was already current, and the family was already in the middle of immigrant visa processing at the U.S. Embassy, when the petitioner took the oath of citizenship.
When the family went to the interview, only the wife was entitled to the visa.Because the petitioner became a citizen, he had to go back and file new immediate relative petitions for each of his three kids.
Although a single petition by a green card holder can cover several family members, if the immigrant wants to file for naturalization, the immigrant may wish to, at the outset, file separate petitions for each of his immediate relatives, so as to avoid the situation of naturalizing and then having some family members no longer being “under petition”.
Please note that the above situation (where each family member must have his own separate petition) applies only to immediate relatives of U.S. citizens (spouse, minor child, and/or parent).
This rule does not apply to petitions by U.S. citizens for unmarried son or daughter (first preference), married son or daughter (third preference), or brother or sister (fourth preference).These petitions would also cover or include derivatives (minor children and/or spouses where applicable).
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