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Founded in 1986
Founding Publisher/Editor:
Lito A. Gajilan
Columnists:
Atty. Michael J. Gurfinkel
Joseph G. Lariosa
Gani P. Tolentino
Ted L. Reyes
Atty. Reuben S. Seguritan
Photographers:
Butch Gata
Sheryl Garcia
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not reflect the opinion of the paper nor that of the publisher
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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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WOMEN hold up one-half of the sky,” goes a famous Asian saying. Indeed, Filipino women played a major role in giving birth to the Filipino nation.
As we honor the women of the world this month, it is only fitting that we try to remember the legacies left by courageous Filipinas who helped cradle the ideals of freedom and democracy through the first century of our of nationhood.
Below is a random list of women who have distinguished themselves by either nurturing the nation during its infancy, or by rushing to its defense through the most trying years of our history.
Melchora Aquino, more popularly known in history as Tandang Sora. She hosted the historic Katipunan meeting in her house in Pugadlawin on August 23, 1896. Tandang Sora would later earn the admiration and respect of Katipuneros when she continued to help the movement by feeding hungry troops and taking care of sick and wounded revolucionarios.
Gabriela Silang, whose name was immortalized by a militant women’s group. She was the wife of the 1762-1763 Ilocos revolt leader Diego Silang. Gabriela later assumed leadership of the rebel forces when her husband was killed by an assassin’s bullet. Four months later, Gabriela was captured and hanged.
The women of Hongkong. Filipinas based in Hongkong who made the red, white and blue flag with three stars and a sun with eight rays.
The “women” of Samar. They who were actually men who dressed up like women just to be able to penetrate a camp set up by American troops. The foreign troopers were lulled into complacency by the presence of these women, who later killed every single American soldier that night, to avenge the rape of their women.
But the Americans retaliated in the most brutal way, with the infamous Gen. Jacob Smith ordering his men to “turn Samar into a howling wilderness.” The Americans also took with them the famous church bells of the town of Balangiga, and until now the US refuses to return the bells.
The women of Cordillera, specifically the Kalingas. They stopped government bulldozers and armalite-wielding Marcos soldiers from destroying their towns and ancestral lands by taking off their blouses while forming a human barricade in 1981.
The all-women blocking force of the Kalingas was part of their struggle to oppose the construction of the infamous Chico Dam project which would have submerged their ancestral lands. Marcos was forced to stop the project.
Lorena Barros. The chairman of the first militant feminist group, the Malayang Kilusan ng Bagong Kababaihan (Makibaka) in the late 60s and early 70s. She later died in an encounter with Marcos troops in Quezon province.
The nuns of EDSA. Armed only with rosaries and flowers, they stopped the tanks from rolling down EDSA and saved Johnny Enrile and Fidel Ramos from imminent death from loyal Marcos troops.
Indeed, our history is replete with shining examples of bravery and heroism from Filipino women of substance.
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Will H-1B quota run out in 2 days?
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Editor’s Note: REUBEN S. SEGURITAN has been practicing law for over 30 years. For further information, you may call him at 212 695 5281 or log on to his website at www.seguritan.com
SPECULATIONS are rife that H-1B numbers will run out within two (2) days from the start of the filing period on April1. According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), many attorneys are assuming that this projection is true even if this could not be verified.
US employers who wish to sponsor H-1B workers have been advised to file their I-120 petitions right away. The USCIS will begin to accept H-1B petitions for Fiscal Year 2008 on April 1 and the H-1B numbers will be available on October 1.
In the event the number of H-1B petitions received on the first two (2) filing days will be sufficient to meet the FY 2008 cap, the US Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) will use the “random selection lottery” to determine which petitioners will be processed.
The experience during recent years when the regular H-1B numbers have dropped down to 65,000 per year is that they run out as early as May or in less than two months from the start of the filing period. Remedial legislation which added 20,000 H-1Bs per year for advanced degree holders had done little to alleviate the high demand for temporary workers among US employers.
Need to Remove H-1B Cap
Microsoft chief and unofficial spokesperson of the high tech industry, Bill Gates, himself called for “infinite H-1Bs” during his congressional testimony last week. According to news reports, Gates lamented the “terrible shortfall” in the number of H-1B visas and warned that the country might lose its technological edge if “it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete.”
When asked by Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) how may visas Congress should approve, Gates repeated a suggestion he made years ago: that there should be an “infinite” number. “Even though it might not be realistic,” he said, “I don’t think there should be any limit.”
Gates also explained that the tendency of tech companies to outsource has been brought about by immigration restrictions. “The IT industry, I guarantee you,” Gates said, “ will be in the US to the degree that these smart people are here in the US.”
Direct Filing Instructions
The anticipated rush of H-1B filings for FY 2008 had presumably prompted the USCIS to issue last week direct filing instructions for I-129 forms for temporary foreign worker and I-539 forms for their dependents.
The direct filing instructions appears to be geared toward facilitating the so-called bi-specialization initiative that replaced the previous system of filing employment-based petitions in any of the four service centers (in California, Nebraska, Texas or Vermont) where the principal office of the employer or the intended workplace is located.
Effective April 2, 2007, the forms must be filed with either the California Service Center or the Vermont Service Center, whichever is applicable, with the correct filing address.
The USCIS will post on its website the proper filing address for petitions on the basis of the intended workplace of the foreign worker. If the temporary employment will be in different locations, the state where the petitioner is located will determine the proper filing location.
The USCIS has reportedly advised that “there is no advantage to submitting a petition for delivery on Saturday, March 31, as all petitions delivered on Saturday will be processed on Monday, April 2nd.” US employers, therefore, are better off filing the H-1B petitions on April 1 and not sooner.
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RP should welcome US Senate investigation
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“You cannot be a prophet in your own homeland.”
-- John 4:43
CHICAGO, Illinois – Some years ago, I ran into a man in Chicago, who asked me my country of origin. When I told him the Philippines, he was smiling but saying, “Oh, your country is very close ally of the United States.” I thought it was a compliment.
Then, I asked him for his country of origin in return. And he told he is from Burma (now Myanmar that is ruled by a repressive military regime).
From his body language, he is proud of his country because it has never been influenced by a “foreign culture,” specially the American culture. He was trying to tell me that keeping their “culture” free from foreign influence is a sign of strong nationalism and independence.
I am raising this matter up because the Philippines appears to be a favorite target of interference by foreign powers, like the United States.
In fact, the latest news coming from the US Embassy in Manila is that US Ambassador Kristie “Kenney has repeatedly spoken publicly as well as at several military venues against extrajudicial killings and in advocacy of ensuring that anyone responsible for such a crime faces justice.”
And this was followed by an announcement that the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (CA-Dem) was going to hold a public hearing in Washington, D.C. on the unabated and unpunished series of politically motivated murders in the Philippines to exert pressure on the government of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to put an end to the killings.
Stealing the thunder
Naturally, Philippine lawmakers did not like the US Senate stealing the thunder from them. One Filipino senator said that by letting the US Senate investigate a purely Philippine matter, Malacanang is ceding its sovereignty to a foreign power.
In telling the Philippine government to “ignore” the US Senate investigation, Filipino Senator Joker Arroyo said the investigation would “derogate our own sovereignty. The executive cannot compromise that.”
Sen. Arroyo, a friend of mine while he was the top anti-Marcos human rights lawyer during the eighties, maybe right in invoking sovereignty. But if his new ally and namesake holding the reins of power in Malacanang will listen to him, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could be accused of washing her bloodied hands for the death of 833 political activists since she took over the presidency in 2001 after the investigation.
I know the real reason for Senator Arroyo’s objection is not really the issue of national sovereignty. But it actually looks like a derogation of the power of the Philippine Senate to conduct such an inquiry. In the back of Mr. Arroyo’s mind and like-minded Filipino senators, they are asking these questions: “Why don’t you let us investigate these killings? Why, the US Senate?”
Worst abuser of human rights
If we go by precedent, if these killings are going to be investigated by Philippine Senate, it will end up in stalemate? Why? Knowing how protective Mrs. Arroyo is of the military, she can always invoke her power so that the military officials, who are linked to the killings, will be “immune” from the Philippine Senate investigations.
The Philippine Senate has been snubbed several times by a non-military official (Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyu I. Bolante). Considering that Mrs. Arroyo owed a debt of gratitude of her assumption to the presidency during the People Power II from the military, there is more reason to believe that Mrs. Arroyo will make every effort to let the military evade the Philippine Senate investigation. Filipinos call it “garapalan” (shamelessness).
Take the scathing excerpt, among others, from the United States’ Country Reports on Human Rights Practices - 2005, released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, March 8, 2006. It says, “The constitutionally mandated Commission on Human Rights (CHR) described the Philippine National Police (PNP) as the worst abuser of human rights.”
If I were Senator Arroyo, I will let the US Senate do the investigating. After all, when the US government implements its foreign policy of befriending its allies by giving away largess, euphemistically called US Foreign Aid, he doesn’t tell the Philippine government to spurn such aid.
It is just one way of saying that if a woman accepts a gift from her suitor, there is a likelihood that she likes the giver and she is likely to welcome the gift-giver in her personal life.
If Senator Arroyo is serious with his “no-interference” call, he should file a bill in the Philippine Senate, making it an impeachable offense for the Philippine president to accept aid from another country.
I subscribe to the idea that a government must follow a consistent foreign policy. If you accept aid from another government, you expect interference from that government. That’s how the carrot-and-stick US foreign policy works.
In like manner, because Burma has no cozy relations with the US, the Burmese guy told me, the US cannot interfere in the Myanmar’s affairs. Something the guy was very proud of.
And by letting the US Senate investigate the killings, Senator Arroyo would be giving substance to the Biblical saying that, “You cannot be a prophet in your own homeland.”
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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ELECTION Day is two months away, but people already have it up to here with “dirt fatigue.” Every day, shadowy overpaid spinmeisters barge, uninvited, into our homes through shrill press statements, smear jingles and idiotic ads.
“Scandals are not like bread,” an African proverb says. “There’s never a shortage.”
The opposition’s “aso” (lapdog) jingle smeared candidates Tito Sotto, Tessie Aquino Oreta and Edgardo Angara. Sotto’s Senate record is zilch. And Aquino-Oreta hasn’t exorcised images of her salsa after the derailment of Joseph Estrada’s impeachment. Now, a beet-red opposition admits that rogue partisans of the late Fernando Poe Jr. peddled the phony story saying Joseph Estrada had morphed from a refrigerated movie-actor to a jingle composer.
Rep. Peter Cayetano’s jingle skewers the unpopular First Gentleman for outbursts during House hearings. But his charges that Arroyo maintained numbered bank accounts proved bogus. Smarting from a reprimand by the House ethics committee, Cayetano fumed: “When I get to the Senate, and get my hands on a committee, he’ll have people like me to deal with.”
Is a Senate committee then a political “batuta” [bludgeon]? Senators Jose Diokno and Emmanuel Pelaez never stooped to such grossness. But this level of venom stains election discourse today.
Spokesmen Ramon “Ace” Durano of the administration and Adel Tamano of the opposition seek civilized debate. But they can’t leash muckrakers swirling around their flanks.
“Voters [are] desperate to go beyond the shallowness of TV ads and the one-dimensionality of posters,” the Inquirer noted in an editorial. In this wasteland, “even a limited debate” between senatorial candidates would be “useful.” And business groups are setting up a debate for March 14, although its venue remains a prickly issue.
Will the choice, meanwhile, “remain between silence or scandal,” as French writer Andre Maurois asked? The inside pages of newspapers carry issues that outrank jingles. Here are two samples:
Rice post-harvest losses -- caused by shoddy milling, decrepit storage, and pests -- come up to 4.9 million metric tons. That waste could feed Metro Manila’s population, with two regions tossed in, for a year, Sen. Ralph Recto said. The National Food Authority spends P28 billion for rice imports from Thailand and Vietnam. There’s silence on what’s being done, if any, to stanch this drain.
“Ang hindi magpatapon ay hindi mangangailangan” [He who does not waste will not want] -- the Filipino axiom cautions. Yet, we lose after harvest 13 percent of corn, almost 35 percent of fruits and over 40 percent of vegetables. This loss locks malnourished kids and penury-strapped families into even more misery.
Whittling post-harvest losses would feed people without plowing additional land now running short. Simple village technology, like harnessing evaporation of water, stored 20,000 ears of sweet corn. “A Filipino consultant transferred the technology to Gambia [in Africa] with even greater success than [here],” notes Susana Castro of the University of the Philippines, Los Bańos. But then when were prophets ever lionized in their hometowns?
The Agricultural Modernization Law (Republic Act 8435) allocated P24 billion for post-harvest programs between 1999 to 2006. An infusion of P444.37 million went for trading posts, village processing equipment, warehouses and cold storage to cut losses in high value crops, like vegetables and cut flowers. Did we get enough bang for the buck?
The second news report dealt with heavy metal pollution in the Davao region. Nationwide, a Department of Environment and Natural Resources tally shows that 180 of the country’s 421 rivers and other bodies of water are seriously contaminated. Fifty are “biologically dead”—they’re so contaminated that they snuff out life.
Rivers form this planet’s circulatory system, the Worldwatch Institute notes. “They form the critical link between land and sea. When such an ecosystem is destroyed, the planet becomes impoverished at all levels -- genes, species, linkages, processes….”
Rivers die because people use them as latrines. Farms and factories funnel their chemical sludge into them. And surrounding forests are razed, triggering soil erosion and sedimentation.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” And there’s a glut of well-meaning laws for rivers: the Water Code, the Public Land Act, the Forestry Code down to Administrative Order 97-23 of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and the toothless Presidential Decree 1160, which authorizes “barangay” [village] officials to arrest violators but provides no penalties. There is, however, patchy implementation.
As the deterioration of rivers and lakes continue, so does the food system. “You can’t eat money” when ecosystems collapse. And banging away at jingles is an exercise in futility.
As Herodotus wrote, “No man steps into the same river twice.”
juanlmercado@gmail.com
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Biggest tragedy – numbing of the Philippines
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THE biggest tragedy in the Philippines is not graft and corruption. The country has just been adjudged the most corrupt in the Asian region by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy which is based in Hongkong or PERC.
PERC made the selection from 13 countries. It ranked the countries one to 10, with 10 the worst. The Philippines got 9.4 as the top.In 2006 Indonesia got this dubious distinction after the military coup. China, Vietnam and the Indons recorded improvements since then. Singapore and Hongkong were selected the cleanest.
We recall a story perhaps more than a decade ago. A Japanese, a Korean and a Filipino were comparing notes. A neutral observer commented the Japanese do it bigtime. Yes, said the Japanese, but we jail even our prime ministers. The observer said the Koreans have doctorates in corruption, they are sophisticated, and do it under the table, but they also put the grafters in jail. What about the Filipinos? the observer said. They are different, he said. They steal everything, including the table.
What then is the Philippine’s biggest tragedy. We would call it the “numbing” of the Philippines.
Yes, the biggest tragedy is not graft and corruption. It is not the worsening groveling poverty of the predominant masses, out of which dark hole there is no visible way out. It is not the massive “deportation” millions of Filipinos from their country of birth, who are not known as deportees but hailed as “modern heroes”, economic saviours of the nation. They suffer breaking up with their families by looking for jobs in foreign shores because there are none at home. Then they send home foreign currencies, which the government boasts as its very own economic miracle as national income, without regard to its social cost.
The real tragedy is the “numbing” of the Philippines. It is a process of deadening the sensitivity of the people so that the creeping deterioration of their lives they will take for granted and will no longer care. The psychological process includes constant repetition of simple denials and lies so obvious that at the start, the people know right away they are untrue. But most of the media is controlled and after a while, after the people’s ears become inured, they begin to care less and less.
How many scandals have been exposed which were shocking in the beginning. But through government inaction and counter propaganda, these scandals have begun to fade from memory. To mention a few, there is the case of Joc Joc Bolante and the multi million fertilizer scam. There is the $2 million bribery scandal of another former cabinet member, Hernando Perez. Both cases were seen as well documented. There is the 2004 presidential cheating scandal involving Comelec and military officials. There is the Comelec computerization project scandal which the Supreme Court rebuked.
And now because of the coming May elections, the Comelec officials, untouched by a formal action by the executive department, are again riding high, giving strong signals that they will probably do a repeat of the 2004 irregularities.
Yes, the problem is the numbing of the Filipinos. Or maybe we should call it the DUMBING of the Filipinos.
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Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 26 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
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
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