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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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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Rejecting an argument being made by some conservatives in his own party, President Bush said Thursday, June 8, that the idea that the United States could force millions of illegal immigrants to return home ‘’ain’t gonna work.’’
Bush told a gathering of Hispanic leaders that the immigration system is broken and Congress needs to pass ‘’commonsense’’ reform that strengthens the border while allowing more foreigners in to work temporarily and giving those who sneaked in years ago a chance to become citizens.
‘’There are those here in Washington who say, `Why don’t we just find the folks and send them home,’’’ Bush said. ‘’That ain’t gonna work.’’
He said although it sounds simple, it is impractical to insist that the 12 million illegal immigrants estimated to be living in the U.S. leave and come back legally. Some prominent conservatives in his party say allowing those immigrants to become citizens without returning home would amount to amnesty.
Bush defined amnesty as allowing those immigrants to automatically become citizens. He said instead they first should be required to prove that they have been working and abiding the law, pay a fine, learn English and wait behind those who have been in the country legally.
‘’We don’t have to choose between the extremes,’’ Bush said. ‘’There’s a rational middle ground.’’
Bush is trying to get Congress to pass his immigration plan, but a block of conservative lawmakers have been firmly opposed to it and prefer legislation that would take a harder stance against those who break the law to sneak in the country. House and Senate negotiators have yet to meet to resolve the differences in the two different approaches.
Later in Omaha, President Bush pushed for cultural assimilation in addressing the nation’s quandary over immigration, which he said is “testing America’s soul.”
Bush said “the ultimate stumbling block, when you think about it,” is what to do with the illegal immigrants already here. Advocating neither amnesty nor deportation, Bush called for those workers to pay a fine for breaking the law, and then “go to the back of the line” in applying for citizenship.
“You can’t enforce with just the Border Patrol and technology alone,” he said. “So long as people have that strong desire to work,” the country needs a plan “so people don’t feel they have to sneak in.”
And, emphasizing the importance of assimilation, he announced plans to form a task force on new Americans, led by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and an Office of Citizenship at the Department of Homeland Security, “to help people at the grassroots...to promote knowledge of our values and history and language.”
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108 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (second from right) joins Philippine officials and parade organizers in opening the 17th Philippine Independence Day Parade in Madison Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday, June 4. From left: Philippine Permanent Representative to the United Nations Lauro Baja, Philippine Consul General Cecilia Rebong, Philippine Independence Day Council Inc. (PIDCI) President Isagani Puertollano, Mayor Bloomberg, and Parade Grand Marshall Dan de Guzman.
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NEW YORK CITY --- The 17th Independence Day Parade rolled down Madison in Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday, June 4, celebrating both the 108th anniversary of Philippine Independence and the centennial of Filipino migration to the United States.
The significance of this year’s Independence Day Parade, organized by the Philippine Independence Day Council Inc. (PIDCI), was not lost to the parade organizers and its guests, most notably its most important guest for the celebration.
“It’s been 100 years since Filipinos first came to Hawaii,” said New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who joined officials of Philippine Consulate General and RP Mission to the United Nations in raising the Philippine flag for the occasion.
“This shows that America is built by people from around the world,” said Bloomberg.
The Independence Day Parade in New York is considered the largest celebration of Philippine Independence outside of Manila.
In last Sunday’s parade, more than 135 Filipino organizations participated in the festival, with festival organizers saying that approximately 15,000 people either joined or watched the parade, or went to the fair grounds to sample Filipino food on sale or watch the show on stage.
“This is a wonderful day for us. The parade is well-organized, and the weather is fine. We’ve been in America for decades, yet we have to continue showing to the future generations our culture,” said Dan de Guzman, Grand Marshal of this year’s Independence Day parade.
The parade celebrates Philippine Independence Day, which actually falls on June 12.
On that day in 1898, Filipino revolutionaries led by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo declared independence from Spain.
Through the years, the Philippine Independence Day parade in New York has become an occasion for Filipinos to show their culture and heritage.
In yesterday’s parade, young Filipino Americans dressed in native costumes danced with wands of flowers, beauty queens riding atop floats waved to the crowd, while members of various contingents marched amid music from several marching bands.
Veterans from World War ll who are now based in Philadelphia and New York, marched proudly and was greeted warmly by the crowd in appreciation of their role in fighting to regain Philippine independence.
Members of Filipino American Women of New York and Connecticut, who are mostly professionals, marched in colorful native gowns.
Members of Justice for Immigrants Filipino Coalition (J4I) and Philippine Forum, who are in the front lines of most recent immigrant protests, marched with giant paper mache dolls to push for legalization of undocumented immigrants and for faster family reunification.
Two performing groups, Kalahi and Kinding Sindaw, showcased through dances the rich history of one of the earliest and largest Asia-Pacific immigrant communities in the U.S.
Kalahi members, dressed in black and red Igorot costume, performed native Cordillera tribal dances.
Kinding Sindaw dancers, who wore a red, pink and violet Muslim gown and shawl, performed the Silat, a Muslim martial dance of Southern Philippines.
Filipino rock band belted out rock love songs and also crooned dance music. Jazz band players marched on the street to the tune of “Puttin’ on the Ritz.”
The festival, although celebrating Philippine independence, is also aimed at honoring Filipinos who have been serving both Filipinos and Americans in the US.
“I feel I’m serving the working people of America as a physician. America gave me a great training to be a doctor here. I help the people who are sick with prostrate problems and diabetes,” said Dr. Catherine Alcarez, a physician in Atlantic City who immigrated from the Philippines 22 years ago.
“I immigrated to the U.S. 30 years ago. As a physician, I help a lot of people who need health care by telling them about preventive medicine. I see an average of 80 patients everyday, “ said Dr. Daisy de Guzman, an internist based in Livingston, N.J. She joined the parade with other members of Philippine Medical Association of New Jersey.
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JOLIET, Illinois – Relatives of a Filipina teacher-turned-nursing aide, who was murdered and raped nearly five years ago in the outlying Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, Illinois, got their wish Tuesday, June 6 when Joliet’s Circuit Judge Gerald Kinney sentenced her killer to a 160-year jail time with no chance of parole.
In an emotional statement tearfully read by murder victim Arlinda Paez’s daughter prior to sentencing in front of dozen relatives of Paez’s family, Grace Paez told the court:
“All these years, my family and I have waited for something to put this nightmare to an end. Finally, we can put my mother to rest. Today is her final burial. I would ask you to consider Emerald Ausby’s brutality upon a kind and innocent woman. Please consider that he is a dangerous person. I ask that you sentence and punish him so that he will never be out on the street again. I ask that you protect other innocent families from pain and despair that we have had to suffer due to the cruelty of Emerald Ausby.”
Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said Emerald Maxwell Ausby, 31, of Bolingbrook, went on a violent spree from June to July of 2001 that started when he stabbed a proprietor of a Bolingbrook dry cleaner shop during a robbery; he attempted to rob a Bolingbrook motel; and he brutally killed and sexually assaulted his neighbor, Arlinda Paez, who was 53 years old at the time of the attack.
Judge Kinney handed down a life sentence with no chance of parole for the murder and a 160-year sentence for the robberies Tuesday afternoon at the request of prosecutors Lea Norbut-Sicinski, chief of Glasgow’s criminal division, and Neil Adams, who heads the state’s attorney’s felony division.
Ausby broke into the home of Arlinda Paez on July 10, 2001. Upon being discovered inside the house, Ausby sexually assaulted Paez and then beat her to death with a baseball bat.
Paez and her husband came to the United States from the Philippines in 1988 because they wanted better educational opportunities for their children. She was a teacher in the Philippines and took a job in a nursing home after arriving in this country when she could not find a teaching job.
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BERGENFIELD, New Jersey -- A blind and deaf Filipino family became the recepients of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”.
The episode on the Llanes family of Bergen County will air on ABC in July.
“The family was not disabled. The house was disabled. We’re enabling the house,” actress Marlee Matlin said May 8, as jackhammers jackhammered, tractors tractored and a swarm of construction volunteers voluntarily constructed a new home for the Llanes family.
Matlin, who is deaf, will host the two-hour episode of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”, according to the Jersey Journal.
The Llanes 50-year-old split- level house was small, dark, noisy and hard to navigate before volunteers demolished it one weekend.
But obstacles are nothing new for this clan.
Blind from a hereditary disease, Vicente Llanes, 42, came from the Philippines in 1997 seeking medical treatment. His mother, Isabel, is blind. His wife, Maria, a physical therapist, is battling thyroid cancer. Daughters Guenivir and Carrie are going blind from the same disease their father has, and teenage son Zeb is deaf because his mother contracted German measles during pregnancy.
Recently, the show’s producers told family members they were chosen from thousands of applicants and sent them to Walt Disney World while the house was being rebuilt.
On May 11, they returned to a home nearly twice as large as the 1,300-square-foot original, now dubbed a “Z Home” for its A- to-Z technology, by Brian Stolar of the Pinnacle Companies, the Chatham builders overseeing the project.
There will be smoke sensors that give spoken warnings, a Braille printer that can be controlled wirelessly by computers throughout the house, and “iCommunicator” software to convert speech into sign-language video clips - in real time.
A Hackensack company called GoAmerica is supplying BlackBerrys and a relay service, so Zeb Llanes can communicate by phone with his mom by sending text messages to an operator.
The handheld “Colorino” can scan and say the colors of clothes and other objects. Stevie Wonder used the device to tease visitors about their ethnicity at a trade show, said Fran Hennelly of Independent Living Aids, a Long Island company on hand for a media preview.
Jon Gabry, a Kearny teen who is blind and deaf, showed off the BrailleNote, a keyboard that lets him type Web queries and then read the results in Braille. Paired with a GPS satellite tracking device and mapping software, the BrailleNote can tell blind users exactly where they are, with directions to nearby restaurants.
Home Automated Living has software called - what else? - HAL, to let the Llanes family program lighting, heating and security systems via microphones, telephones, the TV or the Web.
Many people with disabilities “don’t even know all this exists,” said Joanne Castellano of Shrewsbury’s Family Resources Associates, a training agency.
Some can’t afford such technology, which doesn’t benefit from the same cost-shrinking economies of scale as many consumer gadgets. Government aid often is tied to employment, experts said.
The Llanes family should catch on fast. Vicente, a naturalized citizen, has designed software for the blind and digitized books for a nonprofit called BookShare. Zeb also is computer savvy, and other family members are active with church and civic groups, according to publicists for the show.
“The most important thing is the Llaneses were a happy family before we got here, and they will be happier after we leave,” said Matlin, an Oscar winner for “Children of a Lesser God” in 1986.
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