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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 -- The 27 Filipino nurses and one physical therapist who filed a class suit against a Filipino recruitment agency and 11 US-based nursing homes have likewise filed charges against them before three government agencies in the Philippines.
This developed as an investigator from the Philippine Department of Justice came to New York last week to ascertain whether the allegations of the complaining medical health practitioners have enough basis to warrant prosecution.
The DOJ investigator was able to interview the complainants and asked for documents to corroborate their allegations.
The investigator likewise gave Sentosa, the recruitment agency, and its allied group of companies, a chance to answer the charges against them. It asked Sentosa to submit documents.
The DOJ’s office of the special counsel is mandated by law to file cases within 100 days if it establishes sufficient grounds to go ahead with prosecution.
Immigration lawyer Felix Vinluan said he flew to Manila recently where he filed an administrative complaint against the Sentosa Recruitment Agency with the Philippine Overseas and Employment Administration (POEA).
The nurses and the PT also filed complaints before the DOJ and the National Labor and Relations Commission (NLRC), Vinluan said.
They filed an illegal recruitment complaint with the DOJ, and an illegal dismissal complaint and labor claims with the NLRC.
The complainants filed a class suit against Francis Luyun, Chief Executive Officer of the Sentosa Recruitment Agency and Bent Philipson, Chief Operating Officer of 11 nursing homes.
The nurses said they were recruited to work as immigrant workers, while the physical therapist said he was recruited to work as H-1B non-immigrant workers by Sentosa Recruitment Agency.
In their complaint, they said that Philipson and the companies he represented promised the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to pay them the prevailing wage rates and other employment benefits.
Upon arriving in the United States, the complainant said they were not made to work for the employers who petitioned for them. Instead they were made to work for the companies controlled by Philipson.
This, they said, is “a violation of the undertakings, attestations, promises, as well as documents submitted by Philipson to the USCIS, the Department of Labor, and the United States Consulate in Manila.”
The complainants claimed that they are not being paid the prevailing wage rates and are not being given the sufficient number of working hours per week as agreed upon.
In their complaint, they accuse Philipson and his companies of not paying them the proper overtime pay, night shift differentials, and holiday pay.
They said their employers have not been providing with promised employment benefits, such as dental and medical health insurance coverage, proper orientation and training, and professional malpractice insurance coverage, among others.
Luyun and Philipson denied the charges as baseless in a statement. They also filed charges against Vinluan and the complaining nurses.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A little-noticed provision in the newly passed Senate immigration bill seeks to remove the limit on the number of nurses who can immigrate to the United States.
Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who sponsored the proposal, said it was needed to help the United States cope with a growing nursing shortage, according to a New York Times report.
He said he doubted the measure would greatly increase the small number of African nurses coming to the United States, but acknowledged that it could have an impact on the Philippines and India, which are already sending thousands of nurses to the United States a year.
The Senate provision would remain in force until 2014, has not stirred serious opposition in Congress. Because it is not part of the House immigration bill, a committee from both houses would have to decide whether to include the provision on nurses if the full Congress approves the legislation.
Public health experts in poor countries, told about the proposal in recent days, reacted with dismay and outrage, coupled with doubts that their nurses would resist the magnetic pull of the United States, which sits at the pinnacle of the global labor market for nurses.
Removing the immigration cap, they said, would particularly hit the Philippines, which sends more nurses to the United States than any other country, at least 7,000 a year. Health care has deteriorated there in recent years as tens of thousands of nurses have moved abroad. Thousands of ill-paid doctors have even abandoned their profession to become migrant-ready nurses themselves, Filipino researchers say.
“The Filipino people will suffer because the U.S. will get all our trained nurses,” said George Cordero, president of the Philippine Nurse Association. “But what can we do?”
The nurse proposal has strong backing from the American Hospital Association, which reported in April that American hospitals had 118,000 vacancies for registered nurses. The federal government predicted in 2002 that the accelerating shortfall of nurses in the United States would swell to more than 800,000 by 2020.
“There is no reason to cap the number of nurses coming in when there’s a nationwide shortage, because you need people immediately,” said Bruce Morrison, a lobbyist for the hospital association and a former Democratic congressman.
There are now many more Americans seeking to be nurses than places to educate them. In 2005, American nursing schools rejected almost 150,000 applications from qualified people, according to the National League for Nursing, a nonprofit group that counts more than 1,100 nursing schools among its members.
One of the most important factors limiting the number of students was a lack of faculty to teach them, nursing organizations say. Professors of nursing earn less than practicing nurses, damping demand for teaching positions.
Under the current immigration system, experts estimate that 12,000 to 14,000 nurses have immigrated to the United States annually on employment visas that entitle them to bring their immediate family members and obtain green cards. They must pass English and U.S. nursing exams to qualify for visas.
In recent years, there had been enough visas for foreign nurses from most countries, but a bottleneck developed in 2005, after immigration authorities made a big push to clear a backlog of employment visa applications. That year, Congress set aside 50,000 additional visas for nurses and their families. But those visas will likely have all been used up by early next year, State Department officials said.
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NEW YORK CITY – At least 16 floats and 13 marching bands are participating in the June 4 “Parada sa Madison 2006” in New York City, marking the 108th commemoration of Philippine Independence Day.
Philippine Independence Day Council Inc. president Isagani C. Puertollano, who is also chairman of the Independence Day Parade, and his counterpart chair from the community, Juliet Payabyab, made this announcement on Monday, May 22.
Thousands of Filipinos from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are expected to participate in the parade and to go to the fair grounds where live performances by Filipino talents will be on stage and where Philippine products and services are on sale and display, said Ronnie Atinajara, President of the Federation of Philippine Society in New Jersey.
As in previous years, the parade will start at the corner of Madison Avenue and 41st Street, and will end on 23rd Street, where the fair grounds are located.
The Independence Day parade, which is usually held on the first Sunday of June, is the centerpiece activity of the week-long observance of the Philippine’s gaining independence from the United States.
A Mass and flag-raising ceremonies will be held at the Kalayaan Hall at the Philippine Consulate earlier in the day.
A Philippine Independence Ball is also slated on June 10 at the grand Metropolitan Ballroom of the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers at 811 Seventh Avenue. Reception will start at 7:00 pm which will be followed by dinner dance from 8:00 pm to 1:00 am.
This is the 17th staging of the Philippine Independence Day Parade. The Philippine Independence Day Council, Inc. (PIDCI) has managed and organized the parade for the past three years.
As is customary, the parade Grand Marshall leads the parade. This year’s grand marshal is Dan de Guzman. To bring up the rear, in her own special float is this year’s Diwa ng Kalayaan (Spirit of Independence), Jaemmalou Maranon Javanes.
Aside from the parade, a veritable festival of Filipino food is set up at the Independence Day Street Fair.
Krystal’s Restaurant Café and Pastry Shop of Jackson Heights, Queens was the first Filipino eatery to sign up for the street fair.
Puertollano said another attraction of the day-long celebration is the Cultural Festival. It opens right around the time that the last float of the Independence Day Parade has reached at the parade’s dispersal point at around 2:30 p.m.
The Cultural Festival is held on an open stage north of 23rd Street on Madison Avenue. It is a three-hour program of songs, dances and other entertainment and cultural fare featuring mostly Filipino performers.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U.S. Senate on Thursday, May 25, passed an immigration overhaul that would give millions of illegal immigrants a chance to become American citizens, as backers braced for a bruising battle with the House of Representatives.
The Senate voted 62-36 for the bipartisan bill that couples border security and enforcement with a guest worker program and a plan that would put most of the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants on a path to U.S. citizenship.
``This legislation addresses comprehensively one of the most important and complex issues facing our country,’’ Arizona Republican John McCain said.
It is the most sweeping immigration bill in two decades and has to be merged with a vastly different House bill that calls for tough border security and enforcement measures. President George W. Bush has said he supports a comprehensive approach to immigration reform along the lines passed by the Senate.
But it is unclear lawmakers will be able to work out the differences before the November congressional elections. Republican opponents said they would try to rewrite the bill.
Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl said some Senate opponents will be part of the upcoming negotiations and will “have the ability to craft something, in effect from scratch.”
The congressional debate on immigration has sparked demonstrations across the nation by people demanding immigrant rights, while creating an election-year breach between Republicans who want to focus on border control and those who back new immigration programs.
The Senate measure would allow as many as 200,000 low- skilled workers a year to come to the U.S. and do jobs for which companies can’t find American workers. It also provides a path to citizenship for many of the undocumented immigrants if they pay a $3,250 fine and back taxes, learn English, and pass a background check.
The treatment of those in the country illegally was one of the most contentious points of debate among senators and will be an obstacle in negotiations with the House, lawmakers said.
A bipartisan compromise reached among senators last month divides undocumented immigrants into three categories.
Those in the country more than five years would be allowed to stay at their current jobs, while those here between two and five years would have to go to a U.S. port of entry to apply for legal status. Undocumented immigrants who arrived here after January 2004 would be required to leave the U.S.
During two weeks of debate, supporters of the legislation defeated amendments to eliminate the legalization process or strip out the guest-worker program. The Senate adopted an amendment to reduce the number of guest-worker visas from 325,000 to 200,000.
The number of visas available each year to skilled workers would be increased from 65,000 to 115,000.
The House measure called for 700 miles of fencing, and it endorsed making it a felony to be in the U.S. illegally and increasing penalties on anyone who aids illegal immigrants, a provision the Senate didn’t include.
Congress last made major changes to immigration policy in 1986 when lawmakers granted legal status to 2.7 million undocumented immigrants and made it a crime to knowingly hire those in the U.S. illegally.
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