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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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THE question is simple enough. But the answer may not be easy.
Now that the smoke of electoral battles within the three major Filipino American organizations has cleared, the question now gains utmost importance. What now?
During the campaign period for the elective positions at the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), the Philippine Independence Day Council Inc. (PIDCI) and the Philippine American Friendship Committee (PAFCom), a lot of promises were made by candidates. It remains to be seen wether those who won would really work to fulfill their campaign promises.
But if our so-called community leaders are serious about helping the community, they should come up with programs that intend to help Filipino immigrants whose faces they do not see in their numerous beauty pageants, balls and social nights. We are referring to our fellow Filipinos who were forced by circumstances beyond their control to toil in low-paying, and often menial jobs.
Yes, we have doctors, nurses, accountants, teachers and engineers within the Filipino American community. But we also have kababayans working as cooks, nannies, baby-sitters, house cleaners, cooks, restaurant workers and drivers.
The nurses, doctors, accountants, etc, have their own respective organizations that represent them and promote their rights and welfare. But who will represent and fight for the rights and welfare of the low-salaried Filipino workers?
If these three organizations -- NaFFAA, PIDCI and PAFCom -- hope to remain relevant to the Filipino community, then it must not hesitate to advance the interests of the financially struggling Filipinos. They should act as the champions of the downtrodden members of the community which they profess to serve.
There’s more to being a leader than just holding beauty pageants, parades and balls. A leader is first and foremost a servant. A true leader’s time is spent doing the spade work to make the life of his constituencies a little better, and not by basking in the glamour of the limelight.
After all that’s been said here, the question remains the same: What now?
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia --- To die-hard fans of the Yankees, losing is a painful, heart-breaking experience. For a number of days, they wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and at times, they’re at a loss of words in trying to rationalize what transpired. Unwittingly, they become the losers’ losers.
More importantly, though they are baseball fans, they refuse to believe in that old cliché, “You win some. You lose some. And some get rained out.” For them, they only believe what Vince Lombardi, one of the greatest football coaches, once said: “Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all-time thing.”
The same could be said of some politicians or community leaders who can’t handle rejection or defeat. In their quest for public office, they would like to win them all. But this is impossible; no one wins more than “some.”
They don’t understand the “rainouts,” those people and circumstances for which there will be another day. They need to be remembered and rescheduled for the most opportune time and should not be written off or forgotten. A time will come for them.
A good leader understands these “rainouts” and plans accordingly. The other night, on a telephone conversation with a friend, he used a term for this experience; he called it deferred success. Perhaps in accounting parlance, this is called deferred income – an expectation of some gain or benefit in the future. For a businessman, this may be referred to an investment for the future.
This analogy could also be said of a farmer who sows seed in his farm. Since he couldn’t know in advance where to find the best soil, he had to sow the seed in all directions in order to guarantee that some would land on good soil.
The farmer was willing to take a 75 percent “loss” in order to reap a 25 percent “profit,” which actually yielded a hundredfold dividend.
Or that of a marketing guy, who, after all the marketing plans are made and the strategy is set, no one knows what will happen in the marketplace. All things being equal, the more you produce, the more you advertise, and the more you sell.
Leaders who can’t handle rejection, defeat, or delay don’t last. Leaders who have to win everything every time are short-lived with limited success. They must believe that if they sow good seed, some will fall on good soil. Some will produce good things. Even though they may not see good results immediately, a good seed will produce good fruit.
And that could be deferred success.
Success is not achieved overnight; it is achieved through tests and trials which develops a person’s abilities and skills, character, maturity and a fresh, positive outlook in life. Defeat or rejection should be taken as a stepping stone to success, a roadmap to guide future plans and an encouragement to do better.
More importantly, a leader should understand what Isaac Newton said: “Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.”
And if one had to delve deeply into finding what it takes to become a man of value, he or she should remember that deferred success is a result of a good seed producing good fruit.
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“THEIR jaws drop-ped,” the Malaysia Star wrote of journalists who were stunned that Bangladesh economist Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize. The 66-year-old Yunus leveraged “micro-credit” to enable indigents, using even P450 (US$9) loans, to break free from penury.
Some 191 nominees vied for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Traditionally, it goes to those who sheathe the sword. Thus, the smart money picked the agreement between the Indonesian government and Aceh rebels to stop the bloodletting.
Instead, the Nobel Committee chose a banker to the neediest people, crammed into one of the world’s poorest nations. Have the award’s scope changed?
Look at previous Laureates. In 1979, the Nobel went to a simple nun in Calcutta’s slums, Mother Teresa. “The loneliest, the most wretched and the dying have, at her hands, received compassion without condescension, based on reverence for man,” the citation stressed. In 2004, Kenyan ecologist Wangari Maathai won for mobilizing poor women to plant 30 million trees, despite opposition (which is relevant to a denuded Philippines).
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, 22 years back, cited a fledging experiment that a then little-known Yunus launched to provide collateral-free loans to impoverished women no commercial bank would touch.
“Instead of generating billions of words about poverty, we can find ways to cope with it by continuous creation of assets by the poor,” Yunus said in his response. The foundation took a “big risk in choosing me and demonstrating confidence in our work... In 1984, we reached only 100,000 in a population of more than 90 million.”
Today, Grameen Bank has disbursed $5 billion in loans averaging P6,500 ($130). Nine out of every 10 borrowers are rural women who use the loans to finance livelihood projects. Repayment rate is a stunning 99 percent, ensuring sustainability. The project has been replicated in over 100 countries now, including a pale troubled Philippine copy.
“Across cultures and civilizations, [Yunus and Grameen Bank] have shown that the poorest of the poor can bring about their own development,” the Nobel citation reads. “Loans to poor people, without any financial security, appeared an impossible idea. [They] developed micro-credit into an important liberating force in societies where women ... must struggle against repressive conditions. Every single individual... has both the potential and the right to live a decent life.”
And that includes beggars. In 2003, Yunus added a radical program to Grameen Bank targeting Bangladesh’s beggars. Cyclones, floods, divorce, illness and ignorance reduce many into lifetime mendicants. In the “Struggling Members Program,” no one is tagged by the demeaning word “beggar.” A typical loan amounts to taka 500 (US$9). No interest is charged; nor is collateral sought. For some, Grameen Bank makes credit-line arrangements with shops, up to a given amount. This enables “struggling members” to sell bread, candy, pickles, etc. The repayment schedule is decided by the member. Installments are set by what they earn. There is only one condition: repayment money must not come from begging.
“The word ‘micro-credit’ did not exist before the ’70s,” Yunus told the Deccan Herald. “Now it’s a buzz word ... imputed to mean everything to everybody. Grameen created a methodology and an institution around financial needs of the poor and provided access to credit, on reasonable terms.
“This enabled the poor to build on their existing skill to earn a better income in each cycle of loans... Charity is not an answer to poverty. It only creates dependency and takes away individual’s initiative. Unleashing of energy and creativity in each human being is the answer to poverty.”
“You cannot go on having absurd amounts of wealth when other people have problems of survival,” Yunus said in Dhaka. “As a bank you have to reach the poor people. [The Nobel Prize] is a big change. And banking will not be the same.”
The Philippines also has plenty of bankers, skills, credit—plus a surplus of good intentions. In fact, it created a raft of rural banks and private development banks to funnel subsidized credit to the poor.
“The results of these efforts have been generally disappointing,” writes Mario Lamberte of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies. “Credit subsidies went to those who did not need them most, [leaving] target beneficiaries without access to external funds. Worse, their repayment records were very poor, making the credit programs unsustainable. [It] caused the collapse of several rural and private development banks.”
Can the “unbankable” be helped without cloning the very problems that scuttled previous special credit programs? Bogged down in endless political squabbles, we’ve not bothered to find the answers even as our hordes of beggars increase.
Will we begin, now that the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize reiterates the basic message of the 1984 Magsaysay Award to Yunus: Unrelieved poverty is violence. And it’s capacity to savage human lives and hopes are magnified when they are embedded in laws and institutions.
“More people die each year from poverty than from war,” Sverre Lodgaard of the Nobel Committee told the BBC. “This is not the first time the Committee awarded the Peace Prize for work to overcome poverty and distress in the world which constitute a threat to peace.”
Indeed, as Albert Camus once wrote: “There is no battle worth waging than that for peace.”
E-mail: juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph
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More people get conscientized
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AS more and more abuses are committed in the name of governance, it is becoming more apparent that more and more people are developing a conscience.
This is a good sign that encourages Filipinos not to lose hope.
Who’d ever think that at the height of one such case of abuse, the most recent shameless case of utter disregard of decency by Ombudsgirl Merceditas Gutierrez who could not find an iota of evidence against the Commission on Election for their approval of the illegal purchase of the voting machines, inspite of a contrary findings by the Supreme Court, that almost the entire nation would descend upon her and question her resolution of the case. And that the Supreme Court would stand by their decision against the election commissioners.
This has been preceded by a series of rulings by the Supreme Court which has done a lot to make it recover from their tarnished image because of the heavily criticized unconstitutional ouster of former President Estrada.
These rulings against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo include the Calibrated Preemptive Response used to thwart rallies, the Executive Order 464 or gag order, and the latest, the first section of Executive Order No. 1 which the Presidential Commission on Good Government attempted to use against the Senate but which the Supreme Court struck down as invalid.
Aray! Aruy! Ouch! Could this be the start of the process we would call the “awakening.”
This last mentioned Supreme Court decision in effect told PCGG Chairman Sabio and company they cannot dodge the Senate. They must heed the Senate subpoenas and answer all the senators’ questions to explain their actuations at the PCGG which are being investigated.
Battering ram hits Makati Mayor Binay
A few columns ago, we wrote that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s government has fashioned and started to use a bully’s weapon against her political enemies. We called it the battering ram. Something like that was used to get Pasay City Mayor Peewee Trinidad, one of the opposotion’s local official that is a thorn on GMA’s side.
Trinidad and his councilors were suspended on allegedly trumped up charges. Yesterday, the battering ram hit Binay, a much more formidable opposition leader.
As we write this piece, Makati City, where the Philippines’ Wall Street is located, is tense, with the expected political standoff. Mayor Binay, although merely a city mayor, has national stature as opposition leader. Opposition leaders always feel free to rally against GMA, unlike in other neighboring cities and municipalities, where the rules on permits to rally are strictly enforced by Malacanang allies by the Philippine National Police and even by the military. Strictly no permit, no rally.
As national elections approach next year, the reports are aplenty that the battering ram will selectively hit all local officials with the opposition. Malacanang said it was not political harrassment. But if one looked into the charges brought against Trinidad and Binay, they looked trumped up. GMA allies have more serious cases against them and the battering ram spared them. No suspension.
The situation in Makati City is so serious it merited an advisory from the US embassy asking Americans to exercise caution. Binay, a dyed in the wool anti-Marcos activist and Cory Aquino follower, got out his mothballed military fatigues, and is now sporting it, surrounded by thousands of followers. A big standoff is developing.
This afternoon, jeepney drivers, sympathizing with Binay, are reportedly quitting the roads. They are reportedly surrounding the City Hall to protect their idol. An injunction has been filed with and is being awaited from the Court of Appeals.
Everybody is watching what will happen in Makati, because whatever it is has a consequence on business. During the attempted coup against Cory Aquino in l989 where some shooting took place in the heart of the business district, it was said that the business downturn that followed set back the country’s economy by at least three years.
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Denial of petition/application could lead to ‘instant’ deportation
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AS OF October 1, USCIS has a new policy that if your petition, application, or waiver is denied, they could also, at the same time, issue a Notice to Appear (“NTA”), placing you in deportation/removal.
In the past, people have applied for a wide variety of immigration benefits, such as family or employment-based petitions, adjustment of status, removal of conditions (based on a marriage to a U.S. citizen), fraud waivers, etc. Other people applied for benefits that they were not entitled to, such as political asylum (when they were never really persecuted in the Philippines) or CSS/LULAC amnesty (when they were not in the U.S. continuously since January 1982). They thought, “I’ll give it a try, and if it’s denied, it’s not a big deal. I’ll wait for something else to come along.”
It was often assumed that if a petition, application, or waiver was denied, USCIS would simply send out the denial and close the file, with no further steps or action being taken against the alien. In other words, while USCIS always had the authority to initiate removal proceedings against aliens, it had really not exercised that power on a regular, ongoing basis.
However, the new USCIS policy basically instructs USCIS officers that “once the denial of the application or petition is complete (including applications for waivers for which the applicant may be eligible), USCIS may issue an NTA where the applicant or permanent resident petitioner appears to be removable... If an applicant is removable and there are no means of relief available (e.g., voluntary departure, reinstatement, eligibility for another status), then an NTA should normally be prepared as part of the denial.” In such cases, both the denial and the NTA could be sent to the alien at the same time, or the NTA could soon follow the denial in the mail.
For example, a person may have applied for a green card through Labor Certification, but the case is ultimately denied because the employer did not establish the “ability to pay.” If that labor certification was the only way by which the alien was pursuing a greencard, the denial would make the alien “TNT,” and could now subject him to possible issuance of an NTA.
The same might also be true in connection with denials of extensions of visitor visas or change of status from visitor to student, or if a person’s fraud waiver is denied. Under this new policy, not only will the denial be issued, but USCIS could also place the alien in deportation/removal.
That is why it is all the more important that you seek the advice and assistance of a reputable attorney, who can analyze and evaluate your case (rather than applying on your own, or trying to handle the case or interview yourself). While having an attorney does not “guarantee” your case will be approved, I think it greatly increases the chances that a valid, legitimate case will be approved, rather than it being denied because the alien, handling the case on his own, did not properly package or present the case. With the possibility of “instant deportation” if your case is denied, you should not take chances.
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, 94080 Telephone: (415) 538-7800
NEW YORK:
60 East 42nd Street, Suite 2101, New York, NY 10165 Telephone: (212) 808-0300
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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