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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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An immigrant-friendly Congress?
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THE results of the recent midterm elections here in the United States have no doubt raised the hopes of millions of immigrants that a Democrat-controlled Senate and House of Representatives would be more open to overhauling this country’s broken immigration laws.
The Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives after 12 years of Republican supremacy, gaining at least 28 seats. They also assumed control of the Senate, winning the six swing states they needed to bring their total to 51 seats.
It can be recalled that it was the Republicans in the outgoing GOP-dominated House of Representatives who went all-out to block the Immigration Reform Bill that was supposed to provide a path for legalization for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in this country. The immigration bill approved by the Senate was dead as soon as it landed on the doorsteps of the conservative House.
But with the thumping of Republicans at the polls, it is time to revive efforts to persuade Congress to restart the efforts to craft a new immigration law that would be more humane, realistic and pro-active.
The US’ immigration laws and policies at the moment are in shambles and need fixing. The existing laws have caused many immigrant families to be separated for years, in many cases even for decades. US immigration policies do not reflect this country’s economic needs; it limits the entry of professionals, such as nurses, despite the fact that there is an acute shortage of medical professionals. The US also does not maximize the economic potentials of undocumented immigrants, who can actually become more productive once legalized.
With a more immigrant-friendly Congress, advocates for Filipino immigrant rights should push not only for legalization of all undocumented immigrants. They should also push for the lifting of the visa cap against nurses, and for the passage of a bill that would grant citizenship to direct descendants of Filipino World War II veterans.
The ground may now be fertile for the overhaul of the US’ immigration laws, but we still need to continuously plough the field to ensure that one day, all our efforts will bear fruit.
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With Ang in, one more to go: Yolanda Ricaforte
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CHICAGO – Now that Charlie T. “Atong” Ang is safely back in the loving arms of the authorities in the Philippines, the Philippine government should now train their sights on Mr. Ang’s missing co-accused -- Yolanda Ricaforte.
Ms. RicafoRte’s arrest should complete the missing piece of the puzzle that should be able to corroborate the testimony of Ilocus Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson that she was the bookkeeper for the millions of pesos she kept for detained President Estrada from jueteng (numbers game) collections.
Now about 56 years old, the spectacled Ms. Ricaforte has been on the run for the last five years. Her rap sheet shows that she is five-foot-one-inch tall, weighing 130 pounds, with black hair, brown eyes, answers to such aliases as “Yolly,” “Jolli” or “The Auditor,” and a diabetic.
The wife of the former Philippine Tourism Undersecretary Orestes Ricaforte was last heard to be either in Los Angeles, California, Michigan and Arizona a few days after she left the Philippines following the ouster of President Estrada in January 2001.
Extreme makeover
Of course, except for her height and her brown eyes, Ms. Ricaforte can always apply an extreme makeover of herself. She can either shed or gain some pounds or color her hair blonde, red, gray, etc.
It’s true the trail for Ms. Ricaforte could grow cold. But even if pursuit could last 20 or 40 years, I believe the Philippine government should never give up. It can employ computer enhancement programs to see how she might look like every now and then and pick up pieces of information from her relatives and friends.
This is exactly how the police in Italy doggedly followed up the trail of Bernardo Provenzano, the undisputed chief of the Sicilian Mafia who had been on the run for 43 years, when he was arrested in Sicily last April.
The protection extended by Italian businessmen, politicians and other professionals to Provenzano, known as the “Phantom of Corleone” after his native hill town popularized by the Godfather films, might have extended his elusive streak. But considering that Ms. Ricaforte may not have the clout Provenzano enjoyed, tracking her down should not be as tough.
I would suggest that if the Philippine government is serious in going after Ms. Ricaforte, it should ask the Philippine Congress to pass a special money measure to allocate about a half-million dollar or so reward money for anybody who can provide information for the arrest of Ms. Ricaforte.
This reward money should accordingly increase every year and should be pegged at the prevailing inflation rate. This reward money, I’m sure, will be an incentive to tempt either her relatives or friends to come forward and rat on her.
Will Ang testify vs. Erap?
I’m also sure Ms. Ricaforte is going to follow the fate that awaits Mr. Ang. Perhaps, if Mr. Ang is able to strike a “deal” with the Philippine government that lessens his punishment, Ms. Ricaforte might be tempted to give herself up. She might ask somebody to collect the pot on her head and surrender.
But this much I can tell about the fate of Mr. Ang.
I agree with the observation of US Attorney J. Gregory Damm, who prosecuted the extradition case of Mr. Ang on behalf of the US government, that, “(i)f Mr. Ang is returned to the Philippines, I have a feeling that Mr. Ang is going to be fighting former President Estrada, if Mr. Ang wants to extricate himself.”
It’s too bad Mr. Ang’s testimony will no longer be figuring in the plunder case against Mr. Estrada. But the Filipino people will be waiting in bated breath how Ang can evade the life sentence, which is the maximum penalty that he can draw from the plunder case.
Abangan! (Watch out!)
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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ZAMBOANGA – As the plane banks for its final approach, you glimpse the sparkling Sulu Sea. How does such azure beauty disguise the reality of plundered waters?
The sea and nearby Tubbataha Reefs are savaged by “Malthusian over-fishing,” notes a Swedish Academy of Science report. This shattered the myth of inexhaustibility here – and elsewhere.
Moro Gulf fishermen used to catch 100,000 tons yearly. Now they haul in only 2,000 tons, mostly cheap “trash fish.” Panay Gulf and Bohol Sea yield four to five metric tons per square kilometer yearly – compared with its original potential of 15 metric tons. And tuna catch in General Santos still hasn’t recovered from its 2004 record catch plunge.
It’s consuelo de bobo (“fool’s sedative”) to mumble that others are in the same fix. The journal Science reports that worldwide, stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries. If this trend is not reversed, “there’ll be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by 2050.”
“This century (could be) the last century of wild seafood,” Stanford University’s Steve Palumbi tells British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Palumbi worked with 11 scientists from Canada, Sweden and Panama on this “meta-analysis.”
Boats today are larger, nets better and sonar more effective. Yet, “the global catch dropped by 13 percent between 1994 and 2003. Fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity,” the study asserts.
The biodiversity deficit spins off into other problems: from beach closures to harmful algae blooms. The study “paints a picture of the cumulative harm done across the board,” writes Richard Black, BBC’s environment correspondent.
Projections by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Canada peg 100 percent collapse by 2048 unless this exploitation rate is reversed. “We’ve gone through one-third of a finite number of stocks,” Dr. Worm adds. “There is an end in sight. And it is in our lifetime.”
This impacts on the Philippines, which tops eight nations in the 300-million-dollar yearly global trade of ornamental fish species. Manila supplies 43 of 93 species traded, from sea horses to the sapphire devil, the UN’s Environment Programme notes. It sold 1.52 million fish, compared with Indonesia’s 943,000 plus.
Fish remains the main source of protein for the poor. And population is growing. “Protecting stocks demands the political will to act on scientific advice,” the report says. Otherwise, they will follow “the Grand Banks cod of Canada into terminal decline...”
We’re short of political grit, too. General Santos didn’t curb over-fishing, wanton destruction of fish sanctuaries and poaching. Worse is the illegal use of fine-mesh nets that destroy juveniles and disrupt the food chain of tuna.
Globally, this lack of will is shown in the UN General Assembly’s failure to clamp a moratorium on “bottom trawling.” Heavy trawls wreck vital corals on the ocean floor.
Fuzzy data spawns destructive practices. Officially, the Philippines ranks as the world’s fifth largest producer of tuna. In fact, we’re probably the Western Pacific’s largest producer, tuna authority Dr. Anthony Simon said. Most vessels here are just not registered.
“For many fisheries, their status maybe summed up as ‘IUU’: Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated,” the Swedish Academy report notes. This chaotic situation spawns practices like over-harvesting, introduction of alien species and poison.
Squirting cyanide into reefs to stun fish originated in the Philippines and Taiwan in the 1960s. “In the mid-80s, more than 80 percent of all fish harvested in the Philippines and destined for the aquarium trade were collected using cyanide,” the UN Environment Programme reports.
But poisoning decimates marine populations. It destroys reefs. Misuse of cyanide spread to ASEAN countries, then leapfrogged to Maldives in the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Seychelles.
There’s evidence that protected areas bring back biodiversity within the zone and restores populations of fish, notes the World Conservation Union. Silliman University’s marine reserve off Apo Island, Negros, proves that.
More reserves are coming up in Dapitan, Camiguin, as well as in the Mindanao Sea, Tańon Strait, and Sulu Sea. “Most are managed by local communities and local government units.” Quality of management is uneven.
“Without doubt, the Sulu-Sulawesi Sea is a global priority area for immediate conservation initiatives,” the Swedish Academy report notes. “It lies at the center of the world’s tropical biodiversity and is surrounded by rapidly growing populations and rapidly deteriorating ecosystems.”
Among other measures, a fully integrated network of protected areas, supported by local communities, can play a key role rebuilding this depleted resource.
“Nature has a God-given capacity to regenerate once the hand of man is no longer raised against it,” the late national scientist Dioscoro Umali wrote.
Above all, we’d need what the biologist and author Carl Safina calls a “sea ethic” – a sense of values that balances exploitation and conversation of a once-presumed boundless resource, now threatened by man.
(E-mail: juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph)
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Breakup of GMA political machine
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AT this point, it looks irreversible. The breakup of what a few days ago looked like a formidable political machine of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has started. The Supreme Court decision that killed the charter change through People’s Initiative dealt the fatal blow.
The event is turning out to have more serious political repercussions than the withdrawal of support by the so-called Hyatt 10. At the time, if not for the timely intervention of former President Fidel V. Ramos who promptly declared support for the embattled GMA, many speculated her regime would have ended and the military might have taken over.
This time, FVR is again intervening but in a different vein. He is telling GMA and Speaker Jose de Venecia, his former ally, to abandon their unlawful pursuit of Charter Change and move on with their economic reform program.
Now the allies of GMA are in disarray. They are singing divergent tunes. They have lost harmony. Instead we hear cacophony. And to crown it off, the last few panicky days were capped by another shocking but not exactly unexpected development. A strand of unity that has bound the Arroyo family to the influential legal group, Villaraza and Angangco, snapped. The law office became so powerful it became known as the “Firm”. And it is cozily housed in the LTA (Lourdes Tuazon Arroyo) owned by the clan which has sometimes been called the “Malacanang of Makati”.
The break happened when Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, appointed by GMA, led the 7-8 votes that defeated People’s Initiative, and penned the viciously worded ponencia against the charter change petitioners.
Justice Carpio in his ponencia called GMA’s PI proposal a grand scheme to deceive the people. Then it was followed by a blame-game that forced one of the founders of the “Firm”, Avelino Cruz, Jr., appointed by GMA as Secretary of National Defense, to quit her Cabinet.
Cruz’ resignation was preceded by rumors that three or four other Cabinet secretaries were spreading intrigues against him. The panic that characterized GMA was indicated by the shock that for a while paralyzed her to inaction.
In two preceding columns, we predicted the start of a move by the proverbial rodents to abandon the sinking ship. Cruz’ resignation was preceded by the departure of three administration senators who announced they would run for reelection next year under the opposition banner: Senate President Manuel Villar and Senators Francisco Pangilinan and Ralph Recto.
What’s next? At this stage, the quiet Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police bear watching. It has been known that former Defense Secretary Cruz was one of the “doves” among GMA’s military and civilian advisers who voted against declaration of martial law before. The question now is how would his parting of ways with GMA affect the ongoing restiveness in the armed ranks.
And what about second and third waves of Hyatt 10-like departures from the Cabinet and the bureaucracies?
From our sources, we have learned of other rifts among GMA’s allies, not necessarily connected with charter change. For example, we heard of a rift between Finance Secretary Gary Teves and two powerful House of Representatives allies of GMA, Rep. Prospero Nograles, majority whip, and Rep. Prospero Pichay.
Source of the friction reportedly was the lukewarm attitude of Teves to some of GMA’s economic reform agenda. This includes the rumored “pork”, the cheap loans to be dispensed by non-banking institutions akin to the notorious Masagana 99 of the Marcos era, designed for next year’s elections.
There was also the friction over two Teves appointees, a former head of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (finally ousted after it ended in a confrontation before GMA), and the incumbent Insurance Commissioner who has become quite controversial in the industry. The case of the IC head may not reach the Palace, because Teves is reportedly set to resign before the year ends to run for the congressional seat of his father, Rep. Herminio Teves.
Expect more political realignments as the elections approach. And as this happens, expect more cracks to show on the administration’s facade.
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Avoiding problems with your case - Part 2
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IN A previous article, I discussed some items which could be viewed by the Embassy or USCIS as being suspicious, triggering delays, and possibly resulting in investigations, administrative review or denials. Here are more items:
4. “Date Of Marriage” Appears On Child’s Birth Certificate, Where The Parent Under Petition Claims To Be “Single
Some children are born illegitimate. But in order to “save face” or save the child (and/or the parents) from “embarrassment”, sometimes parents put down a date of marriage on that child’s birth certificate. However, if the parent is being petitioned as single (such as a single child of an immigrant or U.S. citizen), the date of marriage appearing on their child’s birth certificate could lead the Embassy to believe that the parent is really married. (This is because the marriage of a person being petitioned as “single” would affect their eligibility for a visa. If they are being petitioned by an immigrant parent (F-2B), the marriage would void the petition. If they are being petitioned by a U.S. citizen parent (F-1), the wait for a visa would be much longer.)
If you are truly single, and are being petitioned as single, but put a date of marriage on your child’s birth certificate, you must be able to present appropriate evidence and documentation to the Embassy to prove that you were truly single, and the date of marriage on your child’s birth certificate is incorrect. Under no circumstance should you manufacture or simulate a birth certificate for your child (from Recto Street), listing the child as illegitimate, and then having that simulated birth certificate “late registered”. Giving fake documents to try to conceal information could be grounds for you to be refused a visa, due to “misrepresentations”. Please note that having an illegitimate child will not void your petition, so long as you were truly “single”.
5. Late-registered birth certificates
When children are born, births are ordinarily promptly registered with the Local Civil Registrar (LCR) and the National Statistics Office (NSO). If you submit a late-registered birth certificate (especially if registered many years after a child’s birth) the Embassy or USCIS may require an explanation as to why the birth certificate was registered “late.”
Sometimes, people submit late registered birth certificates when they want to hide a marriage of the parents (as birth certificates include information on the parents’ date of marriage), an out-of-wedlock birth, or the true date of a child’s birth (i.e. over 21 years old). Other times, people in the provinces or barrios just don’t have the time or money to go to the cities or towns where the Local Civil Registrars are located, to register the birth.
Conclusion
If you are not entitled to an immigration benefit and hope to “get away with it”, you should be aware that the Embassy and USCIS are very wise to the above circumstances, and many more. You would not be the first person to be involved in any of the above situations. These schemes have become so common in the Philippines, that they are now routinely investigated.
This is why, even if you are legitimately entitled to immigration benefits, but your case looks suspicious, you should consider the assistance of an attorney who can analyze your case, gather the necessary documents, and prove your visa eligibility to the Embassy or USCIS, satisfying any questions, concerns, or suspicions. This way, you may be able to avoid delays, investigations, or possible denials of your case.
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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