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For the past 21 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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LAHAINA, Hawaii – A Filipino-American soldier died on Good Friday in Iraq from wounds caused by a roadside bomb that exploded near his unit in Baghdad, a Hawaii-based newspaper reported on Sunday, April 8.
Family and friends said Pfc. Jay Cajimat, 20, a resident of Lahaina on the island of Maui, had been eager to join the US Army before graduating from Lahainaluna High School in 2005.
They described Cajimat as a “loving son,” a “role model” to his siblings and the “unspoken leader” among friends.
Cajimat was born in Manila. His family moved to Maui when he was three years old. He enlisted in the Army immediately after graduating from high school.
He was with the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Fort Riley, Kansas.
“He was a good soldier, and he loved to serve his nation,” his mother, Lilibeth Cajimat, told Maui News reporter Lehia Apana.
“He always said he wanted to be in the Army,” added his 16-year-old sister, LC.
Her brother had a “positive personality and was always easy to get along with.”
“He was really funny, lovable and just a fun person to hang out with. He loved to play and joke around,” LC said. Anne Goff, an 18-year English teacher at Lahainaluna, recalled Cajimat as being “very sweet, hardworking, very respectful.”
“His dream was to go into the military to serve his country,” she said. “He could hardly wait to graduate to join up.”
Cajimat is also survived by his father Dionie Cajimat and two other sisters Kaya, 18, and LJ, three.
Dionie Cajimat said his son always set a positive example for his three younger sisters. “He was a good son, always talked nice about his sisters and always advised them to be good.”
Cajimat’s mother said her son’s body will be brought back to Hawaii to be with friends and family. However, family members were undecided whether to bury Cajimat in the Philippines or in Hawaii.
Twenty-year-old Eileen Domingo, a former Lahainaluna classmate, said Cajimat seemed to have a premonition about getting killed in Iraq.
“He knew that it was going to happen,” she said. “He knew he was going to die for his country... It was brave of him going in (to the military) knowing that.”
Friends said Cajimat was scared of going to Iraq “but he was excited.” “I guess he had mixed feelings about it,” said classmate Sheryl Tacuban. “I’ll miss laughing with him and stuff, having a good time with him.”
Classmate Tuan Pham, 19, recalled that Cajimat was in tears when he phoned him from Iraq about a month ago. “He had an emotional breakdown, and he asked me to watch over his family if anything ever happened to him.”
Longtime friend Walter Batarina, 19, said Cajimat “had his good and bad days” but was “definitely proud” to serve in Iraq.
However, Cajimat regretted being so far away from his three-year-old sister, LJ.
“She was attached to him, and he would always take care of her,” said Batarina. “I guess he was scared he wouldn’t be there as she got older.”
Cajimat’s sister, Kaya, agreed that he wanted to be home and watch over LJ. “I think he regretted going because he wouldn’t get a chance to see her grow up.”
LC said she kept in contact with her brother through a MySpace site on the Internet. The last time they communicated was last week, she said.
“He told me that Iraq was getting to him... It was getting hard for him, but he said don’t worry about him,” Kaya said.
“I just told him to hang in there, and that we all love him,” she told Maui News. “He’s a hero to all of us.”
Friends said it would be difficult to accept that someone who they leaned on is now forever gone.
“He was the leader of our group,” said classmate Germine Corpuz, who first met Cajimat when they were about four years old at a church event. They were friends and schoolmates ever since.
“We couldn’t believe that a guy like him actually passed, and now we’re just trying to collect ourselves,” said Corpuz.
“Within our group, he was the unspoken leader, although he’d never admit it,” said another classmate Rodney Saribay, who was friends with Cajimet since third grade at Princess Nahienaena school. “If you had a problem, you’d go and see Jay.”
Cajimat still seems to be around for his friends even after his death, Saribay said, “We still confide in him and still go to him, even though he’s not here.”
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YUMA, Arizona - President Bush visited the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, April 9, to tout a guest worker program for immigrants, pursuing a key domestic policy goal despite chilly relations with Congress.
The trip, a bookend to the visit that Bush made to the same southwest desert city last May, comes as tension rises over a new immigration proposal tied to the White House.
Bush’s team is privately working hard to rally votes for what Bush calls comprehensive reform — a mix of get-tough security with promises of fair treatment for undocumented residents.
Upon arriving in Yuma, Bush met Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The two took a quick look at the “Predator,” an unmanned plane that border officials use to monitor the region.
Bush pointed to two new layers of fencing that have been erected at the border since he visited the same spot a year ago.
“It’s amazing the progress that’s been made,” Bush told border officials. “I was most impressed by your strategy, but more impressed by the fact that it’s now being implemented.”
Both Bush and the Democratic-run Congress are eager to show some accomplishment on a core issue like immigration. Yet, it’s a sticky subject, and the fault lines don’t necessarily fall along party lines. For Bush, opportunities to see through his domestic agenda are shrinking.
With up to 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., lawmakers haven’t agreed on how to uphold the law without disrupting lives, eroding the work force and risking political upheaval.
Bush is hopeful for a legislative compromise by August. He was making his case at a point along the Yuma Sector Border, a 125-mile stretch overlapping Arizona and California. Bush hoped to send a message that the stepped-up border enforcement is working.
Administration officials led by Chertoff and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez have been meeting privately for weeks with Republican senators. That expanded to a meeting in late March with key senators from both parties.
Out of that session, a work-in-progress plan emerged — one described as a draft White House plan by officials in both parties and advocacy groups who got copies of the detailed blueprint.
The floated proposal has already met opposition. Thousands of people marched through Los Angeles on Saturday, spurred in part by what they called a betrayal by Bush.
The plan would grant work visas to undocumented immigrants but require them to return home and pay hefty fines to become legal U.S. residents. They could apply for three-year work visas, dubbed “Z” visas, which would be renewable indefinitely but cost $3,500 each time.
The undocumented workers would have legal status with the visas, but to become legal permanent residents with a green card, they’d have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.
That’s far more restrictive than the bipartisan bill the Senate approved last year.
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NEW YORK CITY -- The 10 Filipino nurses in New York charged with, among others, endangering their patients have asked the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to rule on the case of contract substitution they filed against Sentosa Recruitment Agency.
On Monday, the nurses’ lawyer, Filipino-American Salvador Tuy, said Sentosa allegedly violated POEA recruitment rules and regulations by making the nurses work for Avalon Gardens, which does not appear in the POEA-approved contracts with Sentosa Recruitment Agency in Manila.
Tuy urged the POEA to re-impose a preventive suspension on Sentosa to protect other Filipino nurses from suffering his client’s fate.
Among the nurses is Elmer Jacinto, a medical doctor who topped the board exams in Manila but instead chose to go to the United States to work as a nurse because of the higher pay.
Tuy’s other clients are: Juliet Anilao, Harriet Avila, James Millena, Mark Dela Cruz, Claudine Gamiao, Jennifer Lampa, Rizza Maulion, Maria Theresa Ramos, and Rainer Sichon.
Tuy is also representing the nurses’ lawyer, Felix Vinluan, who has been charged with solicitation. In a phone interview, POEA Administrator Rosalinda Baldoz told The Philippine Daily Inquirer that officers on the case have promised to come up with a decision this week.
The case, filed April last year, caused the immediate suspension of Sentosa. However, when the agency submitted its position, the POEA lifted the preventive suspension.
Sentosa, whose case was backed by a US senator and former Presidential Management Staff chief Mike Defensor, argued that the nurses left without spending anything and were immediately given immigrant status.
Defensor had asked Baldoz to look into the case.
Tuy and his clients said the allegedly undue influence of the US senator and Defensor might have been the reason for the immediate lifting of Sentosa’s preventive suspension.
“Under Philippine law, the charge for switching an employer to the damage and prejudice of the Filipino worker is a violation of the recruitment act. If there are more than three complaints against the recruiter, the offense constitutes economic sabotage and there is no bail allowed. Yes, we could have at least suspended Sentosa’s license,” he said.
“I am completely unsatisfied with our justice or just ‘tiis [bear it]’ system. But I am doing something on my own to help these nurses by drawing as much legal help from volunteers,” he added.
Tuy argued that his clients cannot be charged with abandoning their patients and endangering children because the employer on record is Prompt Nursing Agency.
“There is a legal definition of an employer in New York State law and US federal law and Avalon is not the employer of records of the 10 nurses,” he said.
“This brings the question how can the nurses be charged...if they are not employees of Avalon Gardens and they were not supposed to work there in the first place. Remember that the definition of the endangerment law requires the accused to be ‘legally charged with the care or custody of a child,’” he added.
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WASHINGTON — Legislation that would give full veterans benefits to many Filipinos who fought in the U.S. Army against the Japanese during World War II would cost too much, the Bush administration said on Wednesday, April 11.
Ronald R. Aument, deputy undersecretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee paying even a portion of those benefits would cost at least $4 billion over a decade.
In addition, veterans who live in the Philippines and receive full benefits would have a much higher standard of living compared with the rest of country’s population, Aument said. “VA benefits paid to beneficiaries living in the United States, such as U.S. veterans, do not enable those beneficiaries to live higher than the general U.S. population,” he said. “We do not support the bill because it would disproportionately favor Filipino veterans over U.S. veterans.”
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said providing full benefits for Filipino veterans would cost about $1 billion over 10 years.
Filipino veterans, who laid a wreath Tuesday, April 10, at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, told the VA committee about their wartime experiences and struggle to get benefits they believe they are owed.
“We served with honor and loyalty,” said Benito Valdez, 83, of Seattle. “Today — 63 years later — that loyalty and sense of duty has not faded away. Many of us aging Filipino war veterans believe that it is our American allies who have forgotten us.”
Sen. Dan Akaka, the Hawai’i Democrat who chairs the Senate panel, said the Filipinos deserve the benefits they were promised when they fought alongside U.S. soldiers.
Denial “means they are not officially acknowledged by the United States government as true veterans,” Akaka said.
Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, the top Republican on the committee, said he supports giving Filipinos full benefits but added he’s worried about the cost and the standard-of-living issues.
“The same benefit paid to veterans in the Philippines would provide income that is almost four times the average household income in that country,” he said.
Art Caleda of Waipahu, a former Filipino intelligence officer, said Congress in 1946 “unceremoniously stripped our well-earned honor and highly deserved benefits.”
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Caleda, 83, suffered a shrapnel wound in his lower chin during a mission to rescue a U.S. pilot officer–Lt. Paul Foster in Northern Luzon.
“I survived the war through blood and sacrificed a lot. I took my oath of allegiance under the American flag during the war. However, the U.S. government has persistently continued to ignore our military service since 1946 and avoid granting us benefits. We must have equal opportunity,” said Caleda.
Manuel Braga, a veteran now based in California, said the issue si not just about money.
“Most of us are now old, sick and frail and living in poverty, but we share one thing in common. We want to correct the injustice against us. Please don’t think about this bill only in terms of money. Please think about restoring our dignity, great honor and self-respect,” said Manuel Baraga, a veteran from California.
About 200,000 Filipinos were drafted into the U.S. Army in 1941. Many fought at Corregidor and Bataan and later became part of guerrilla units organized by the U.S. military in the islands’ mountainous jungles.
They tied down Japanese forces, preventing them from being deployed elsewhere.
In 1946, Congress stripped thousands of the Filipino fighters of their eligibility for full veterans’ benefits to save money.
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