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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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New York City, NEW YORK --- To the beat of drums provided by a group of Hispanic protesters, two giant-sized Filipino migrant higantes (giant puppets) swayed and towered along the streets of Manhattan.
Behind them proudly strode some 200 Filipinos, who joined the huge immigrants march from Union Square to the City Hall on May 1 calling for legalization of some 11 million undocumented immigrants and the fast-tracking of family visa applications.
The Filipino contingent, led by the Justice for Immigrant (J4I) Filipino Coalition, is among the hundreds of thousands of protesters who showed up for a rally at the Union Square, which culminated in a march along Broadway to Foley Square. Approximately another one million also came out to march in key cities all over the United States chanting “Si se puede (Yes, we can)” and “we are America.”
Dubbed as a day without immigrants, at least 100 stores closed shop along the Hispanic-dominated commercial district of Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, with thousands staying home and not reporting for work and school.
Alyanna Roa, a sixth grade student at a public school in Maspeth, Queens, said half of her class were absent on May 1.
Another Filipino contingent, led by the DAMAYAN Migrant Workers Association, the Network in Solidarity with the People of the Philippines (NISPOP) and Ugnayan ng mga Anak ng Bayan, were positioned at the tail-end of the two-mile stretch of protesters. They chanted: “Hey hey, ho ho, deportation has got to go!” and carried placards reading: “No to guest worker program,” and “Legalization for all immigrant workers!”
The protest in New York City started off with a human chain by noontime. In Queens, protesters held hands from both sides of 37th Avenue, starting from 74th Street to as far as 20 blocks away.
The same human chain spectacle was seen snaking along blocks of streets in The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island.
The May Day rally was also called The Great American Boycott, when immigrants all over the US were urged not to buy, not to sell and not to go to work or school.
It was meant to show the economic value and contribution of immigrants to the US economy.
Filipino marchers mixed Spanish chants with Filipino chants, invigorating the agitated crowd, and offering them a taste of Filipino cultural pride.
From the towering buildings of Manhattan, onlookers from above cheered the sea of marchers below on Broadway, making noise from their windows by banging pots and some even throwing confetti, the J4I said in a statement.
The J4I is pressing the US Congress to scrap House Resolution 4437, which seeks to criminalize undocumented persons and their supporters. J4I has led several Filipino community actions in Queens demanding that the bill, and a host of other “copy-cat” bills in the US Senate, be scrapped.
“Today we are not only marching to fight for our basic human rights, we are marching as a community that is proud to be Filipino. We are proud because we can never forget who we are.
“That is why we cannot accept these immigration laws that disrespect us,” 14-year old Malaika Queaño of Kinding Sindaw, a Filipino indigenous cultural organization that is also a member organization of J4I, said as she read a statement.
Like many other youth, Queaño did not attend school to join the march and was accompanied by her parents and sister, all immigrants from the Philippines.
Queaño also marched donning her mother’s nursing scrubs. “My mother is a hard worker and provider for us. This country should treat her with respect, not like a criminal, just because she is an immigrant.”
“We enjoin ourselves with our immigrant sisters and brothers to fight these racist and repressive immigration bills in Congress. We must also unite as Filipinos to bring a collective voice to our particular immigrant experience in this country, even if we have to amplify it through boycott,” stated Robyn Rodriguez, a sociology professor from Rutgers University, who is also with J4I.
Rodriguez, who marched with her eight-year-old son Amado, said the coalition is calling for full and unconditional legalization for all and swifter family reunification measures via more family visas and faster family visa processing.
“I am one of the thousands of domestic workers here in New York,” said Elena Shannon, a board member of DAMAYAN. “I am very positive that this May 1 will be remembered as an important day in our lives. Together we can be stronger to succeed in our aim to have the right to be legal immigrants in this country and free from exploitation in our home countries.”
Of the four million Filipinos in the US, approximately one million remain undocumented or TNT [tago-ng-tago].
Over 70 percent enter the US through family sponsorship, said immigration policy analyst and New York attorney Cristina Godinez, ”Yet because of the high-volume of family visa applicants from the Philippines, Filipinos are given one of the longest wait periods for family visa processing-- up to 23 years,” the Filipina lawyer said.
J4I’s Berna Ellorin served as co-chair for the main Union Square rally. She told the crowd about the immigration aspirations and contributions of the massive Filipino immigrant community, the third largest in the US.
Other speakers included Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton actress Susan Sarandon, and dozens of immigrant community representatives.
The Justice 4 Immigrants Filipino Coalition is composed of the Philippine Forum, Anakbayan New York/New Jersey, NY Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines, Migrante International, Movement for a Free Philippines, Filipino-American Human Services Inc. (FAHSI), Sandiwa National Filipino-American Youth, Critical Filipina/Filipino Studies Collective, Kinding Sindaw, Bayan USA and others.
The public is urged to sign the Immigrant Communities in Action petition for a just and humane lmmigration bill posted at http://www.petitiononline.com/HR4437/.
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NEW YORK --- A Texas senator has filed a new bill in the Senate that seeks to double the number of immigrant visas for highly skilled professionals.
Senator John Cornyn, (R-TX) introduced on May 3 the Securing Knowledge Innovation and Leadership Bill (the “SKIL Bill”) that proposes to keep and facilitate the entry of highly skilled foreign workers to the US to uphold American global competitiveness.
The SKIL Bill will more than double the immigrant visa cap to 290,000, and allow unused visas to be rolled over and use every year.
It seeks to keep the current allocation to reserve more than half of the immigrant visas for highly skilled workers. It also proposes to increase the H-1B specialty worker visa to 115,000 per year, from the current limit of just 65,000.
The bill is expected to benefit foreign workers who have applied for green cards but have been subjected to backlogs. Such foreigners, under the bill, would have to pay a $500 fee to apply for adjustment of status thereby enabling them to remain in the US while the green card application is being processed.
At present, the employment-based third preference (EB-3) worldwide is backlogged by four years. Skilled foreign professionals such as teachers, doctors, accountants, architects, engineers fall under the EB-3 category.
Highly skilled or educated foreign professionals as well as their spouses and children will be exempt from the immigrant visa cap under the SKIL Bill.
These professionals generally cover four groups, namely: (1) extraordinary ability foreigners; (2) US-educated professionals with advanced degrees; (3) those granted a medical specialty certification based on US post-doctoral training and experience; and (4) those with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics who have worked for at least 3 years in the US.
The SKIL Bill proposes to allow the employer to sponsor an F-1 foreign student while the student is still on optional practical training (OPT). The OPT period under the bill will be extended to two years, instead of one year under current laws.
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McAllen, TEXAS --- Friends and neighbors could not believe the man who died early Sunday morning in a police shootout would kill people in a senseless rage.
Thirty-four-year-old Arthur Ramirez killed his wife, Alma Ramirez, 32, and Rene Rodriguez, 21, at a housewarming party near Trenton Road, according to police and partygoers. He barricaded himself in the house for some 20 minutes before emerging to fire at officers, police say.
The night’s incidents came as a shock to those who knew the married couple, a nurse and nurse-in-training, who came to the Rio Grande Valley from the New York City area about three years ago. Arthur Ramirez had always projected a cheerful, outgoing demeanor, according to staffers and neighbors at the apartment complex where he and his wife have lived for about a year.
“Whenever he comes around, the group electrified,” Padini Santiago, a close friend and neighbor of the Ramirez’s, told the Texas-based The Monitor. “He’s known to all the circle of friends here.”
The couple was part of tight-knit Filipino community who moved to the area within the past five or six years to fill a nursing shortage. Many, including Santiago, his wife and son — who moved from the Philippines about four years ago — attended the party at 420 Quail Ave. this weekend.
In fact, on the night of three killings, Ramirez had driven Santiago to the hospital for shoulder pain. The doctor told Santiago to stay at home because of the painkillers, but he decided to attend the party anyway because his DJ equipment was already there.
He spent most of the time sleeping upstairs, deejayed a few songs and then had a friend take him and his family home, Santiago said.
When they left, all seemed normal.
But the Santiagos’ phones started ringing with the awful news just minutes after they arrived home. By 4:00 a.m., even the apartment complex manager, Dora Garcia, knew, because Padini Santiago’s wife, Kay, called, asking for the keys to the Ramirez’s apartment.
“She said, ‘Art killed Alma.’ I said, ‘Oh my gosh,” Garcia recalled. “Everyone around here knew them... He didn’t look like the type that would do anything like that.”
The Santiagos couldn’t believe it, either. In the year they had lived together in Lindberg Square apartment complex just north of Business 83 in McAllen, they had become close with the Ramirezes.
They had a shared Filipino background, both Kay Santiago and Alma Ramirez worked as nurses and their children were friends, the Santiagos said.
“She’s so hardworking,” Kay Santiago said. “She works a lot because she’s also sending money to her parents in the Philippines. She’s a good daughter.”
The two husbands had also carpooled each other’s children to Horizon Montessori School in McAllen.
But, apparently, something was wrong between the Ramirezes they never told their friends.
“He never manifested to us what was going on at home,” Padini Santiago said. “The typical jolly guy, and then suddenly he threw out his rage that night.”
Garcia, the apartment complex manager, said she had never heard the couple arguing and that the police had never been summoned to settle any domestic dispute.
The Ramirezes’ friends may still be coping with their shock and grief — Padini Santiago maintains a Web site for the Valley’s Filipino community, but has steeled himself enough to post just once about the couple — but the question remains what will happen to their 10-year-old son, Joshua.
The boy is reportedly with a foster family.
Arthur Ramirez’s brother, Armando Ramirez, said Sunday night he was worried about his nephew and was trying to arrange to collect him.
Friends said on Tuesday, May 2, they had heard the boy’s grandfather was to arrive in the Valley that day from the East Coast.
Meanwhile, his classmates in the third grade miss him, 7-year-old Miguel Santiago said.
“When I went to the classroom, his friends were crying,” the second-grader said.
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MANILA --- The Supreme Court has upheld President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s power to declare a state of emergency but ruled that arrests and a police raid made under Proclamation 1017, her instrument for such a declaration in February, were illegal.
Voting 11-3, the Supreme Court said the Constitution empowered the President to declare a state of national emergency but also said the arrest of university professor Randy David and Akbayan national chairman Rolando Llamas and the raid at the office of The Daily Tribune by virtue of Proclamation 1017 violated the law.
Those who dissented were Associate Justices Renato Corona, Presbitero Velasco, and Dante Tinga who wanted the high tribunal to include a definition on the extent of the President’s emergency powers.
The decision was penned by Associate Justice Angelina Sandoval-Gutierrez.
Police arrested David and Llamas while they were trying to negotiate for allowing a peaceful demonstration to mark the anniversary of the EDSA People Power uprising last February 24.
Police also raided the Daily Tribune office and used materials gathered there to file rebellion charges against the editor-in-chief, Ninez Cacho-Olivarez, and columnists Herman Tiu-Laurel and Ike Señeres.
Seven petitions had been filed with the Supreme Court to declare Proclamation 1017 unconstitutional.
The petitioners include Randy David, Alternative Law Groups, Ninez Cacho-Olivares and Tribune Publishing co., former senator Loren Legarda, Kilusang Mayo Uno (May First Movement), Representative Francis Joseph Escudero and 22 other oppositionist congressmen, and the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP).
Respondents include Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz Jr., Interior and Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno, Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Generoso Senga, and Philippine National Police Chief Arturo Lomibao. (MNS)
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