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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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MANILA -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was brought to a Quezon City hospital Thursday evening, June 22, after suffering abdominal pains while at a restaurant with relatives, one of her chief aides and a radio report said.
Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor said the President was brought to St. Luke’s Medical Center at around 9:30 p.m. after returning to Malacañang and getting a quick examination by a doctor there.
Police in the capital, put on a heightened state of alert earlier in the day due to reported concerns of possible bomb attacks, were upgraded to full alert after Arroyo fell ill, Metropolitan Manila police chief Vidal Querol said.
Defensor and attending physicians said the President would likely stay in the hospital until Friday morning, but gave assurances she was okay.
“There was nothing to worry about. She’s okay,” Defensor said in Filipino. “The President is resting.”
He told reporters that Arroyo was being kept overnight as a precautionary measure while she undergoes routine checks. “She’s undergoing routine checkups needed so we can be assured there’s no complication and nothing major about her situation.”
Cabinet officials, including Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, began arriving at the hospital to visit her.
President Arroyo was at a Quezon City restaurant attending a pre-birthday celebration of her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, when she complained of abdominal pain and an upset stomach, Defensor said. The First Gentleman will turn 60 on June 27.
The joint Cabinet and Regional Development Council meeting Friday scheduled in Davao City and her visit to Compostela Valley were cancelled. She is set to leave Saturday for a trip to Italy, the Vatican and Spain, with a decision on whether to proceed to be made later, Defensor said.
Arroyo has been under enormous pressure since she took office in January 2001 in the country’s second “people power” revolt, fending off several coup plots and constant rumors of others, along with a string of terrorist attacks and natural disasters.
Her situation has worsened over the last year as she has survived an impeachment effort over allegations that she rigged the 2004 election. Opponents have threatened to pursue another impeachment attempt when the current one-year ban on filing more than one complaint expires Monday.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Republican congressional leaders say an immigration bill offering citizenship along the path outlined by President Bush is unlikely to pass this year.
“Our number one priority is to secure the border, and right now I haven’t heard a lot of pressure to have a path to citizenship,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R- IL) said Tuesday, June 20, in announcing plans for an unusual series of summer hearings around the nation on Senate-passed immigration legislation.
“I think it is easy to say the first priority of the House is to secure the borders,” added Rep. Roy Blunt, the GOP whip.
GOP leaders were not saying publicly that the president’s ambitious plan for a guest worker program and opportunity for citizenship for many illegal immigrants is dead for the year, but several Republicans in both houses were more direct when speaking on condition of anonymity.
“There will be no path to citizenship,” said one lawmaker who attended a strategy session in Hastert’s office.
This led California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, to sharply criticize House Republican leaders’ plan for summer hearings on a proposed immigration overhaul before trying to compromise with the Senate.
The Republican governor said public forums across the country were unnecessary because “we know what the facts are.’’
“It would be inexcusable, it would be ludicrous for them to say, ‘Well, we can’t work it out,’‘’ Schwarzenegger said. “That’s their job -- to work it out.’’
Schwarzenegger called for more secure borders and “a legal way’’ for Mexicans to work in the United States.
“I think everyone in the United States is expecting immigration reform,’’ he said.
Some officials added that Republicans have begun discussing a pre-election strategy for seizing the political advantage on the issue, perhaps by holding votes this fall on additional measures to secure the borders, or on legislation that would prevent illegal immigrants from receiving Social Security payments or other government benefits.
“The discussion is how to put the Democrats in a box without attacking the president,” said one aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Additionally, GOP aides said Rep. Tom Reynolds, chairman of the House campaign committee, has recently been using polling data to persuade fellow members of the leadership that the public would respond poorly to some provisions in the Senate-passed bill.
“The president is undeterred,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said after Hastert’s announcement of hearings. “We are committed and we have been working very hard with members (of Congress) to see if we can reach consensus on an issue the American people have said they want action on.”
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, (R-TN), told reporters he welcomed hearings. “As much examination of the House bill and Senate bill as possible is good,” he said.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), a principal author of the Senate-passed measure, offered to testify at House hearings and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said, “I’m hopeful” of a compromise before the elections.
The House passed border security legislation last year, largely along party lines. By contrast, the Senate approved a bipartisan bill calling for tougher border enforcement; penalties against employers who hire illegal immigrants, a new guest worker program and a shot at citizenship for most of the estimated 12 million immigrants in the country illegally.
The measure won the support of only 23 of the Senate’s 55 Republicans, however, and Frist, a likely presidential contender for 2008, is under pressure from conservatives not to agree to a compromise bill they oppose.
Democrats insist that any final bill remain bipartisan.
Hastert told reporters he had conveyed his views on immigration privately to Bush in recent days, and other officials said opinions among House Republicans hardened when Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray won a special election this month in the San Diego area. Bilbray campaigned for tougher immigration measures than Bush favors, and equated the president’s approach to amnesty.
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NEWARK, New Jersey -- A Filipino man pleaded guilty on Monday, June 19, admitting his role in a plot that smuggled more than 25 Filipino illegal aliens into the United States through Newark Liberty International Airport.
In pleading guilty to a single conspiracy charge, Roehl Rivera, 41, implicated a former driver at the Micronesian Embassy in Washington, D.C., Enrico Calderon, who was indicted in May and awaits trial.
Rivera admitted to smuggling Filipinos into the United States on stolen third-country passports for which they paid as much as $15,000 each, prosecutors said.
Rivera, of Cabanatuan City, Philippines, smuggled the Filipino TNTs (tago-nang-tago) between May 2005 and January 2006 on Continental Airlines flights from Hong Kong to Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, according to a statement from Christopher Christie, US attorney for New Jersey.
Rivera and three of the aliens were detained at the airport on January 6 when they were found to be traveling on altered passports illegally obtained from Micronesia’s embassy in the United States, referred to by prosecutors as “Country M.”
Micronesia, which is not named in official documents because of US Justice Department requirements, has a relationship with the United States that allows holders of its passports to live and work in the United States without a visa.
“The aliens did not have a right to travel under that agreement,” said Seth Kosto, an assistant US attorney for the District of New Jersey.
Illegal immigrants often pay large sums to human smugglers and endure harsh conditions in their effort to enter the United States. In China, gangs known as Snakeheads arrange to smuggle people to the United States in return for debts that take years for them to repay as illegal workers.
Kosto said the immigrants paid as much as $15,000 each to the smugglers.
Rivera made at least four trips from Hong Kong to Newark with parties of aliens, who were trained to answer questions about “Country M” if questioned by US immigration officers, the statement said.
Rivera was only paid between $400 and $500 per trip, according to prosecutors.
The “Country M” passports were obtained by Enrico Calderon, an accomplice of Rivera’s, who worked as a driver for the country’s Washington embassy, Kosto said.
Calderon, also 41, of Springfield, Virginia, was charged separately in May with smuggling around 30 aliens to the United States between December 2004 and January 2006. He faces five counts of smuggling aliens carrying a possible prison sentence of three to 10 years, and is detained pending trial, the US attorney’s office said.
Rivera, who is charged with conspiracy to smuggle aliens for private financial gain, faces up to five years in a federal prison and a $250,000 fine. Judge Dennis Cavanaugh set sentencing for Sept. 27.
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