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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 weekend, the entire United States will celebrate Memorial Day weekend.
For us Filipinos living in the US, the three-day weekend has come to mean traveling to the beach, the river, or the mountains and having barbecues and picnics. But we should not lose sight of its true meaning.
Memorial Day was initially designed to honor those who had given their lives during the American Civil War. That first Memorial Day, May 30, 1968, was recognized with the placing of flowers on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. It was not until after World War I that the day was designated to honor all Americans who perished in any war.
It is indeed a very noble day of remembrance -- honoring the sacrifices of men and women who gave up their lives for the country.
Even as we take our hats off to the American people for remembering their war heroes, we should also bear in mind that we, too, pay tribute to our fellowmen who died in defense of the Motherland.
We have Bataan Day and Corregidor Day, to honor Filipino soldiers and guerrillas who made their last stand against advancing Japanese forces, first in the province of Bataan, and later in the Manila Bay island of Corregidor during the Second World War. It is said that the valiant effort put up by Filipinos helped stall the advance of the Japanese imperial troops, which helped other Asian countries to put up a better defense and aided the Americans’ escape to Australia.
We also have provinces and regions holding annual commemoration of display of bravery. Among them the Battle of Tirad Pass where Filipino troops stood their ground to allow General Emilio Aguinaldo to escape pursuing American forces; and the Battles of Besang Pass and Balete Pass, where Filipinos and Americans assaulted Japanese lines during WW II, which hastened the fall of the Japanese in the Philippines.
And yes, we have our National Heroes Day, which used to be known as Andres Bonifacio Day that falls on November 30. On this day, we remember the heroism of our forefathers who joined the revolution against the Spanish colonial rule.
Indeed, remembering our glorious tradition of heroism restores our faith in the Filipinos’ capability and willingness to lay their lives for freedom.
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Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?
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PHNOM PENH – One of the most important bills that perhaps got ignored in the on-going debate over illegal immigration, is a legislation sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas.
The proposed legislation, which is included in the Senate provision, removes the limit on the number of nurses who can immigrate to the U.S. and is expected to pass this week. The senator was quoted to have said that the legislation was needed to help “cope with a growing nursing shortage.”
According to the American Hospital Association, which supports the nurse proposal, hospitals have about 118,000 vacancies for registered nurses. At the same time, the federal government foresees that the continuing shortfall of nurses may expand to more than 800,000 by 2020.
There seems to be no opposition in Congress; however, it is not included in the House of Representatives’ immigration bill. If Congress approves the legislation, a committee from both Houses would then have to decide whether to include the provision on nurses.
There are those who support the Senate measure as well those who oppose it. Bruce Morrison, a former Democratic congressman and a lobbyist for the hospital association was quoted to have said that “there is no reason to cap the number of nurses coming in when there’s a nationwide shortage, because you need people immediately.”
On the other hand, Eric McKeon, associate director of government affairs of the American Nurses Association, which represents 155,000 registered nurses, said “Congress should focus on strengthening the U.S. nursing education system rather than relying on ethically questionable strategy counting on nurses from developing countries.”
She was disappointed that Congress is outsourcing the education of nurses instead of providing appropriations for domestic nursing programs.
The measure may benefit experienced nurses from the Philippines, one of the leading sources of nurses to meet the demand in the U.S. The Philippines sends more nurses to the U.S. than any other country.
Nowadays, even doctors, as you may have read from newspapers, are now taking nursing courses, to be a nurse. They believe they have better chances of going to America or elsewhere abroad instead of relying on meager salary offered by hospitals in the homeland.
According to Beatriz Sawal, a nurse trainer at the government-run Jose Reyes Memorial Hospital, a physician in a government hospital earns less than $300 a month, while a nurse earns around $150 or less. This means that a nurse earns a starting salary of less than $2,000 a year compared to $36,000 or more in the U.S.
That could be a light at the end of the tunnel many nurses and physicians have been waiting for. As the probability of the legislation getting passed in Congress gets stronger, it is expected that many are expected to leave.
As it is, according to a Philippine government agency, in the last three years, more than 50,000 nurses have left the Philippines mainly for Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the U.S.
While the plight of health professionals may benefit Philippine economy through the billions of dollars of remittances from Filipinos overseas, its health care system could collapse. This could result in a medical crisis, which most health experts dread.
According to the Private Hospital Association of the Philippines, since 1998 close to about 700 hospitals have stopped operations, mainly because of lack of personnel. This is projected to increase to a thousand in the next four years.
Many questions are raised: Should the government draw the line? Should individual and the state’s economic interest prevail more than the overall interest of the health of the Filipino people, and ultimately, the state itself? Should the freedom of an individual to seek a better pasture elsewhere be curtailed or allowed to prevail over that of a state? Is it a sound economic policy for a nation to depend largely on its citizens to find work abroad? Or should a state develop other alternatives to support its economy?
Isn’t it true that health is wealth and that a healthy individual contributes more to society? And if society prospers, its citizens are content? Maybe but that’s for economists or philosophers to argue about.
Are there several versions of a light at the end of a tunnel which people see?
Nurses and physicians from our homeland may see it as a long awaited opportunity to leave the country and earn more? Recruiting agencies and lawyers in the U.S. may see it as an opportunity to earn their living.
The government may see it as an opportunity to boost its economy. And many of those who are left behind bereft of better prospects in life may see this light at the end of the tunnel as the light of an incoming train.
Is the proposed legislation a light at the end of the tunnel?
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FACC elections unconstitutional?
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CHICAGO, Illinois -- This Sunday, May 28, Mr. Rene Abella, the vice president of the FACC, will be elected president of at least 17 out of the more than 100 organizations in the Chicagoland area.
Abella will formally take over on July 1 to give the outgoing FACC President Herminio “Ka Miniong” Poblete time to make a four-year accomplishment report, including financial report, during his turbulent term of office.
Instead of facing an opponent, Mr. Abella will be the only candidate for president in the Filipino American Council of Chicago elections, the first time that an FACC presidential candidate will be running unopposed.
At first blush, Abella’s election as FACC president augurs well for the organization because there is no heated rivalry and bitter controversy that attended a similar exercise four years ago.
Rene will not be spending any of his personal money to print posters, buy advertising spaces in community newspapers or air time in community television programs and radio. Nor will he be raising funds.
He will not be facing a debate, where he could have made public his agenda.
No contract with voters
In short, he will not be accountable to anyone because he was elected without telling the voters why they elected him.
In other words, he cannot make any mistake because he has no contract with the voters.
But in reality, Rene Abella’s no-opposition election is not only a violation of the FACC constitution that says “the President shall be elected by a plurality of the votes cast by the delegates in the regular election (not convention) of the FACC” “on the last Sunday of May of the election year” but it does not tend to unite the community, which is the main objective of the FACC.
After the one and only Bagong Partido realized at the convention held earlier that Rene would become the lone candidate, the Bagong Partido should have abandoned the convention because the FACC constitution mandates for a competitive “secret balloting” during the general elections, not open election.
Undemocratic
By letting Rene Abella run unopposed, the Bagong Partido has abandoned the democratic tradition of election. It instead adopted China’s monolithic Communist Party’s anointment of leaders by the elite, who are not even popularly elected by the people of China.
The Bagong Partido’s convention not only deprived the FACC voters the right to choose the best candidate for the presidency, it took away whatever excitement that is usually generated by a competitive election.
The excitement usually attracts voters to go out and vote. It also interests other non-member organizations to join the FACC, which is main objective of the FACC constitution.
The excitement translates to dollars because those who take part in the election and the new members are the ones buying tickets to support the FACC projects. Otherwise, the same old members will tire out as repeat ticket buyers!
Publicity-shy
The FACC board of elections did not make the situation any better when it was very skimpy in publicizing the May 13 deadline of filing of candidacies from positions other than the president, depriving others from filing their candidacies.
If we go by precedent, at the more “democratic” election or referendum in Thailand during a snap election this year of its Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who ran unopposed, will Rene resign also like Prime Minister Thaksin, if the turnout of voters is less than 30 percent?
Will Rene take the high road (out of the sense of propriety) of talking to his sister into withdrawing as FACC defense counsel in the court case filed by Rey Sapnu against FACC to avoid conflict of interest?
If not, how can Rene, tell his sister to speed up the resolution of the case, if the speedy resolution will mean less payment of retainers to the law office of his sister but more expenses for the FACC?
I asked Rene how much legal fees have been paid by the FACC to the law office of his sister. Rene could not provide me an answer.
Second vice president?
Another basic question I asked Rene that remains unanswered: How come Jimmy Alban was appointed acting president after Sapnu was expelled by the FACC when Sapnu’s vice president Ms. Mae Lunt was not expelled? If Ms. Mae Lunt refused to take over, shouldn’t the FACC amend its constitution so that it will allow the succesion of a second vice president? The second vice president could take over if the first vice president could not.
On another vein, when I asked Rene what he will do if he gets public criticism from the print media, instead of saying that he will answer the criticism pointblank, Rene said, he will toss the newspaper in the trash can.
Rene explained that “if you see a shit on your yard, are you not going to toss the shit in the trash bin, so that your children cannot step on it?”
If we go by Rene’s logic, isn’t it like saying that if his mother or his teacher will ask Rene why he is not doing his homework, is his mother or his teacher talking trash/shit to Rene?
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IT’S ONLY 76 days before --- no, not Christmas. It’s two-and-a-half months before Speaker Jose de Venecia’s “prophecy” is to be fulfilled.
By end of July, De Venecia predicted either a bulldozed constituent assembly or “people’s initiative” will have: (a) scrapped the 1987 Constitution; (b) abolished the Senate; (c) run a nationwide plebiscite overseen by an incorrigible Commission on Elections; and (d) strapped us into a still-to-be-defined parliamentary system. “A land of milk and honey” will then be around the corner, we’re told.
Could this be what former Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew called, in his memoirs on the Philippines, the “missing gel”? It’d enable a talented, diligent but fractious people to finally get their act together.
Then, why are many passengers scrambling off the Charter-change express before it careens into the terminal, even as President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo leans on the throttle?
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), for one, has yanked the “stop” cord. “The bishops were alarmed at the continuing and deceptive campaign to gather signatures, under a people’s initiative,” the CBCP president, Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, said.
Catholic social action centers nationwide reported the “pirma” [signature] campaign lacked adequate information and discussion, added the low-key CBCP vice president, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, SJ. It certainly was “not initiated by the people.”
Most congressmen and assorted officials couldn’t care less. They’re staying on board. After all, one of its transitory provisions would scupper the next elections -- and stretch their terms for three hassle-free years.
Thus, De Venecia’s salivating legion won’t enact the needed enabling law for a people’s initiative. Nor will they wait for the Supreme Court to rule if the two houses of Congress must vote separately on constitutional changes. If 195 representatives sign on, the time is ripe.
“It’s ‘hinog sa pilit’ [forced to ripen],” says lecturer Evelyn Miranda-Feliciano. “Anything forced to ripen before its time -- pineapple or politics -- turns distasteful and bitter.”
A frenzied administration, using government machinery and funds, seeks to make “hinog sa pilit” through people’s initiative. “(This) shows the move is not from the people but from government ... (and) kills creative initiatives people may have,” Feliciano writes.
“I hate being manipulated by my own government,” she adds. “I cannot find any valid reason that changing the Constitution now will make life better. What needs changing is the people holding power at present.”
A “real people’s initiative” would be one of sustained civil disobedience, Feliciano says. Not paying your taxes, overseas Filipino workers withholding their remittances, mass absences, etc. “I greatly wonder how it would be.”
What’s needed is not Charter change but a new culture frame, writes the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture’s Melba Padilla Maggay. Otherwise, constitutional tinkering will only end up with “just a piece of paper that can be thrown aside when found to be technically inconvenient by those in power.”
Fr. Leonardo Mercado, SVD, agrees in his new book, “Political and Legal Philosophies: Western, Eastern and Filipino.” He writes: “We must change the paradigm of our government from the rule of law to the rule of virtue, which in Filipino is called of ‘pamahalaan’ [government].”
Rule of law is a major factor in growth and stability, Maggay notes. It emerged from centuries of struggle against despotic monarchies. It built systems, buttressed by culture, which kept faith with social contracts and sustained a just system of reward and punishment, enabling a society to flourish.
Blind copying of Western models results in gridlock. “In Asian political and legal philosophies -- be it law as dharma, as li, as torah or as shariah -- political agenda rests upon self-discipline and strives toward solidarity,” Mercado writes.
Instead of constitutional tinkering for the political survival of elites, Maggay and Mercado stress the greater need for a common frame for what Filipinos stand for. Constitutions only put down on paper the moral consensus that a community has arrived at.
The next 76 days will show whether this was a bogus prophecy. Or will the end of July see a nightmare: a force-fed constitution would install, in a sham parliament, unelected representatives who, for the next three years, would further impoverish a nation sedated by entertainment.
What a measly epitaph that’d make for us: “They saw it coming. But they neither had the wit nor grit to resist the plunder of their children’s futures.”
E-mail: juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph
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How lucky can the opposition get?
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IN the unfolding political drama on the Philippine scene, at least two developments are taking place which initially were perceived by the anti-Gloria Macapagal Arroyo forces as strokes of bad luck. But in reality, they are turning out to be strokes of good luck for them.
The two events are the emergence of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago and Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez as GMA stalwarts. As one analyzes the “value” of the two defenders of the realm to the cause of the administration, we are sure the phrases that cross the minds of GMA’s allies and give them discomfort are “loose cannons” whose directions are difficult to control, a “rampaging bull” let loose inside a Chinese crockery shop, “needs” that they need like they need a hole in the head.
How lucky can the opposition get?
The fight over constitutional change or Charter Change or Cha Cha is a battle for credibility. Who is more credible? Do we believe as the administration argues that we need Cha Cha to save the country from the economic disaster which GMA has created and continues to worsen? Or do we believe that it is all about assuring the political survival of GMA?
A highly esteemed business and civic leader, Ting Paterno, has voiced out his conclusion, after resigning from the Constitutional Commission created by GMA, that the proposed amendments was in reality a plan to establish a dictatorship.
In detail, he enumerated and analyzed proposed provisions why this is so.
The processes being pushed by Congress under GMA ally Speaker De Venecia would set up a unicameral system with the abolition of the Senate. The lower and the upper Houses are pitted against each other.
At the “great sacrifice” (she said) of losing her job, Sen. Santiago has abandoned her Senate colleagues to work for its abolition. She boarded the administration’s Cha Cha Express, after joining GMA in her recent state visit to Saudi Arabia. We don’t attribute anything to the arid desert air for her decision. It is typical of her mental and verbal acrobatics in the past.
She justified her not entirely unexpected decision by saying she does not wish “to forfeit by default my duty to help write the new constitution.” The “Philippine Daily Inquirer” in a recent editorial tried to discern the senator’s mind and expressed the hope that “she is simply learning to turn the stone of political reality into the bread of political opportunity.”
By Sen, Santiago’s action hopping into the Cha Cha Express, how many Filipinos already believers of its benefits or still entertaining doubts about its promises to help the country, jumped in the opposite direction to get off the speeding train? Effectively, the opposition scored gains with the senator’s defection. The opposition must be asking, “Any more Miriams?”
In the same vein, the anti-GMA forces are doubly lucky that they have Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez taking charge of her legal strategies. The successive slap-downs rendered by the Supreme Court on the administration’s legal moves in the past such as Proclamation 1017, Executive Order 464, and the CPR or calibrated preemptive response bared the incompetence of GMA’s legal advisers.
Then there is the reversal he suffered in the arrest order against the so-called Batasan 5. The face-saving “They should go back to the mountains. That’s where they belong” admonition to the five. The rash declaration to the media to charge recipients of FBI’s agent Aragoncillo found guilty of leaking classified materials of treason, a war crime when no state of war exists between the Philippines and the US.
The opposition must be wishing GMA should appoint more Raul Gonzalezes.
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Bush presses for comprehensive immigration plan
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IN a clear effort to pass an immigration reform bill, President Bush announced on Tuesday, May 16, a plan to send 6,000 National Guard troops to control the flow of illegal immigrants at the border with Mexico.
Bush stressed that he also wanted a guest-worker program, granting legal status to certain aliens. He vowed to veto any legislation that provided only for border security and enforcement, without including a comprehensive solution to the problem of illegal immigration. “An immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive, because all elements of this problem must be addressed together – or none of them will be solved at all,” Bush said.
Following the Bush announcement, the Senate resumed deliberations on a Senate bill that would provide a path for legalization for illegal immigrants and establish a temporary guest worker program, while strengthening the country’s borders.
The Senate indicated that it does not intend to pass a “general amnesty,” because it excluded from the proposed guest-worker program those illegal immigrants convicted of a felony or three misdemeanors.
The Senate’s proposed law differs from the proposal by the House of Representatives, which only focused on enforcement. The House bill did not contain any provision for a legalization or guest worker program.
Analysts have also predicted that Bush’s comprehensive plan would face rough sailing when the Senate and the House meet in an expected conference committee meeting to reconcile the Senate and House bills.
It must be emphasized that these are only proposals, which we are all watching closely. Until a final bill (or proposed law) is passed by both the House and Senate, and signed into law by the President, there is nothing to apply for yet.
People should continue to read the news on the current debate on immigration reform, and write to their Senators and Congressmen, to make their stand on the issue known. They should also be wary of immigration consultants who make it appear that an amnesty program is already in effect. We will continue to monitor developments and inform you of developments on these proposals.
Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 25 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: 966 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94103 Telephone: (415) 538-7800
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PHILIPPINES: Heart Tower, Unit 701, 108 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati, Philippines 1227 Telephone: 894-0258 or 894-0239
(This is for informational purposes only, and reflects the firm’s opinions and views on general issues. Each case is different and results may depend on the facts of a particular case. All immigration services are provided by an active member of the State Bar of California and/or by a person under the supervision of an active member of the State Bar. No prediction, warranty or guarantee can be made about the results of any case.Should you need or want legal advice, you should consult with and retain counsel of your own choice.)
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