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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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To tell us what you think about Filipino Express Online or to comment on the stories published here, E-mail us at Filexpress@aol.com
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JUSTICE NEGLECTED: PHILIPPINES ELECTED
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DESPITE a pattern of egregious human rights violations of over 840 extrajudicial assassinations and more than 200 forced disappearances, the Member States of the United Nations General Assembly recently re-elected the Philippines to a full three-year term on the one-year old Human Rights Council (HRC).
The Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary, Alberto G. Romulo, reported that this re-election “is a clear vote of confidence for the Philippines” as he thanked the international community for their “overwhelming support.”
Far from vindicating the Government of the Philippines, the elections set an important precedent in showing that Member States, particularly those who aspire to serve on the HRC, will be held accountable for their human rights record. The international attention during this election however, was not on the Philippines but on another gross and systematic violator of human rights, Belarus.
The recent HRC election showed that it is possible to hold governments accountable within the United Nations. Prior to the election, the European Union called on Member States to apply strict standards for electing members to the HRC. The concept was simple: countries whose human rights situations continue to be questionable would not fulfill the strict standards and should not be elected.
Despite early signs that the elections seemed pro forma, heavy campaigning prevented Belarus’ election. This precedent set a standard that must be applied to countries like the Philippines, where church workers, human rights defenders, journalists and community activists are all among the ever-rising toll of the dead, abducted, tortured and illegally detained.
Even while boasting of a “third place” finish in the global vote count, the Philippines must be held accountable. One of four candidates for exactly four seats, the Philippines failed to point out that they received the fewest votes amongst those in the Asian group seeking re-election. Despite the certainty of their re-election, some Member States chose not to vote for the Philippines. This is a testament to the fact that the international community has taken note of their human rights record. Membership in the United Nations Human Rights Council brings with it serious responsibilities to uphold the highest standards of human rights. The recent elections show that this principle was clearly applied to Belarus.
The Philippines must also hear the message that, like Belarus, they have crossed the line of acceptability in their flagrant failure to protect citizens, contributing to their record of gross and systematic violations of human rights, even during the part year while they were a member of the Human Rights Council.
The budding Human Rights Council’s mechanism of universal periodic review must be applied to the Philippines. The Philippines must be among the first countries reviewed, so that the killings, forced disappearances, malicious prosecutions, and illegal detentions stop, and impunity comes to an end.
(Guest editorial from the Asia Working Group of Non-Governmental Organizations at the United Nations, New York)
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Senate Immigration Reform Bill
Survives Fierce Debate
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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
SENATE Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to cut off the debate on the Senate immigration reform bill (S. 1348), so the full Senate can proceed to vote on the most sweeping change in years.
But Senate Republican leaders said that rushing the vote could doom the passage of the bill. The Senate proposal has so far survived fierce debates after Republicans attempted to whittle away provisions that would enable 12 million undocumented immigrants legalize their status. Last Tuesday the Senate defeated a proposal that would have made it difficult for undocumented workers to ever obtain permanent residence.
The bill also barely dodged efforts from conservatives to eliminate the guest worker program by conceding a reduction of the annual number of guest worker (“Y”) visas from 400,000 to 200,000. If passed into law, the overhaul of the broken immigration system comes at a great price. While the bill proposal seeks to remove the decades-long backlog, certain family immigration categories will be drastically reduced in favor of a system that allows entry on the basis of education and skill.
Legalization
The bill seeks to address what is perhaps the most contentious aspect of immigration reform—what to do with the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US today.
S. 1348 will allow persons who have been unlawfully present in the US on or before January 1, 2007 to apply for a Z visa after passing rigorous background checks and payment of fines and fees.
Under the Z visa program, the undocumented are initially granted probationary benefits after passing background checks. They may be allowed to apply for a Z visa after border security and workplace enforcement measures in the proposed law are already implemented. Legislators project that these security “trigger” events could take about 2 years.
The Z visa holder can eventually apply for a green card but must pay hefty fines and fees, amounting to $5,000.00 and the head of family would be required to return home at some point. Their green card applications will only be processed after the backlog has been cleared up. The bill’s proposed increase in the annual visa quota is expected to clear up the backlog after eight years yet.
Removal of family visa categories
The most drastic change found in the immigration reform proposal is the elimination of four of the current family preferences, such as brothers and sisters and adult and married children of US citizens.
Under the present system, there are two basic categories of family relationships that qualify for family-sponsored immigration, namely: (a) immediate relatives and (b) preference immigrants. Immediate relatives include: (1) spouses of US citizens; (2) unmarried children (below 21) of US citizens; (3) parents of US citizens (provided the petitioner is over 21); and (4) spouses of deceased US citizens who were married at least 2 years at the time of the US citizen spouse’s death, under certain conditions.
Preference immigrants include the following: (1) F-1 (or first preference) are unmarried adult children of US citizens; (2) F-2A (second preference-A) are spouses or children of green card holders; (3) F-2B (second preference-B) are unmarried children of green card holders; (4) F-3 (third preference) are married children of US citizens; and (5) F-4 (fourth preference) are the siblings of US citizens provided the petitioner is at least 21 years old.
The proposed bill applies new limits to U.S. citizens seeking to bring foreign-born parents into the country. Visas for parents of U.S. citizens would be subject to the annual limit of 40,000 while those for spouses and children will have an annual cap of 87,000, according to reports from the Associated Press.
On the other hand, the reduction of family-sponsored immigration is replaced by greater emphasis on employment-based immigration. A merit system based on education and skills will be used to determine whether a foreign worker qualifies for employer sponsorship.
Filipinos must join with other groups in campaigning for the retention of all the family preferences. We should reform our broken system but not at the expense of our value of family unity.
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“IT began to speak back to me,” painter Joselito Velasco recalls. He meant the oil painting : Hapag ng Pagasa ( “Table of Hope” ).It depicts the Master, breaking bread, on a slum home table of broken wooden slats, surrounded by 12 street kids that he’d picked at random.
Since then, “Hapag” exploded into art discussions, columns, homilies, - and billboards along major highways. “I could not get out of my mind that Pasong Tamo billboard,” admits a Makati policeman known for brutality. He’s now stopped beating arrested street children. He has stopped now.
“This painting disturbed and excited me,” Gawad Kalinga’s Tony Meloto wrote. “Is it because I forgot .. the many left behind?”
After the photo sessions, the 12 kids sank back into slum anonymity. But Don Bosco graduate Velasco found that “the picture took a life of it’s own”. Who really were these 12 kids? Armed with crumpled oil-stained photos,. Velasco searched for them in Metro Manila warrens of unbelievable stench and filth a year later.
“It was like spiraling into Dante’s Inferno,” he recalls. But he found all 12. That included Nene who lives in cemetery niches but will never become a doctor to treat her insane mother. Michael cooks stew from scraps in garbage dump for his grandfather. And “kalkal boy” Emong peddles empty bottles and cartons yet could say of the “Hapag” painting: the children invited the Master for dinner, not vice versa.
By crossing from painter to friend, “I began to know gradually who ( they ) were,” Velasco recalls. They’re the “tip of a hovering mountain of muck. Greed of the privileged few, glorified by society and media as competition, (condemns) them to being treated like mosquitoes or stray cats. (This) calicified into all facets of society.”
The post-painting interviews resonate with whimpers “of children drifting in the dark,” Velasco writes.” (Their) tiny dreams are shattered before they take form. And their voices are often unheard”.
Here are the voices of three: Christina clinging to a battered doll; Buknoy with his wilting sampaguita leis and Jun and Roselle in their shack of collaged cigarette boxes.
In the painting, five-year “Tinay” is the only person looking at the Master. Tinay’s mother works as a maid abroad. Her elder married sisters have no time for Tinay. And her drug addict father is now in jail, for raping her.
“Even if his bones were crushed and made into vetsin, that’d not be enough,” erupts the aunt who visits Tinay, now and then. “She cries all the time. She doesn’t speak. Kaya po laging malungkot at malayo ang tingin n’yang bata ( “She’s always sad and has this far away look.”)
The withdrawn Tinay rarely speaks. She doesn’t smile and trembles when elder men approach. Velasco and the aunt show Tinay the painting. Not a word comes from her dry lips. “Does God really love us?”, the aunt mutters through clenched teeth: “Then, why are there evil people who destroy children?”
Seven year old Buknoy also had a far away look when his photo was taken. Why?, Velasco asked. He had painted that distant look into the canvas. Buknoy recalls he was thinking then of his father who’d beat him up, on return from the photo session, for failing to bring home food from selling sampaguita flower leis.
“My father has no job. And my mother abandoned us,” Buknoy explains. He collects empty cans, mineral water bottles, wires which are sold. Minsan po wala akong tubo. ( “Sometimes, we earn nothing.”) But I try to help my three siblings.”
“He eats only once a day,” Buknoy’s cousin, 16-year old Jenny tells Velasco: “Sometimes, he just holds a pinch of rice. He puts soy sauce on it. And now and then, he gets a boiled banana. Once in a while, I give him something. But then we don’t have enough at home too.”
Thinking back, Velasco notes that Buknoy has the face of “a weary 40-year old breadwinner”. Two scars on his head came from boiling water splashed on him for using the tricycle sidecar of his brother. “He never smiled. And he acknowledged my greeting only by a slow lifting of the eyes that had odd shadows in them.” Constant hunger interlocks with having no one to turn to.
Then there’s the squatter’s shack, made of collaged cigarette boxes, where Jun and Roselle live. In the painting, they sit together facing the Master. “Both were clad in the same clothes they wore when I took their photo a year back.”. They scavange for cartoons, drums, etc to earn their baon.
They have nothing yet see a God as a compassionate, loving father. “Nabubuhay kami sa awa ng Diyos’.” They begin and end their sentence with: ‘kung may awa ang Poon’ . ‘If God will have mercy on us.’ They inherited this phrase from their old people-from past generations. “These are words not merely spoken,” Velasco notes. “But this is their real life.”
At a coffee shop, Velasco beside a lady whose remote clearly lacked a few buttons. “She spoke to Edgar Allan Poe and Leo Tolstoy. We were not alone. She squinted at ‘Hapag’ and said: ‘This strikes me as a poor kids ‘last supper. But they’re not actually poor because they have Jesus.”
And that’s where the title of this 237-page Kenosis Publication book came from: “They Have Jesus: Stories of the Children of Hapag.” Ask your favorite bookstore. It’s a good read. “But these stories,” Velasco writes, “are not to be read on a full stomach”.
(E-mail: juan_mercado@pacific.net )
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What Has The May 2007 Elections Taught Us?
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THE last recent national elections of May 2007, imperceptively though it may seem, saw the Filipinos improving in their maturity. Its results thus far have produced for us some pleasant surprises.
Throughout the campaign, we were pessimistic for the opposition. Despite the public surveys which continually brightened our days as they consistently foretold a disaster for the administration candidates, we held our breath and foresaw a repeat of the cheating in 2004 of the military and the Comelec, and therefore, a defeat for the opposition.
Well, the former happened but not the latter. After all, GMA’s generals continued riding high and the Comelec gang went unpunished and continued to wield a free hand.
There was one thing we kept on stressing. The 2007 elections, even if Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was not running, would turn out to be a referendum on her dismal record of governance. Indeed, there were signs that some administration partisans tried though subtly to maintain a distance from her.
A microcosm of the prevalent antipathy against GMA was seen in the very homeprovince of GMA, Pampanga. Two diehard allies of GMA fought as rivals for the governorship, one dubbed the “jueteng (numbers game) king”, the other the “quarry king”.
With their known resources and Malacanang connections, the two pounced on a Catholic priest who was their lone rival. They also fought against each other. The people’s wrath were directed against GMA and the two, resulting on the priest’s victory at the polls.
The “referendum” effect on the national senatorial elections were not as evident in the local elections. In the senate race, it appears clear that majority of the new senators would be opposition. Noteworthy were the opposition victories in Makati and Manila. The arrogant exercise of power by Malacanang against Makati’s mayoralty candidate Jejomar Binay not only gave him an unusual landslide win. It is believed the same backlash against GMA produced more votes for the opposition in other areas in Metro Manila and the country.
We are not yet sure if two military figures who ran for the Senate, Trillanes and Honasan, would finally land in the magic 12, but their performance was unprecedented. Honasan for the greater part of the campaign was confined in jail on coup charges. Trillanes was never released, but from his jail cell, he gave no doubt about ending GMA’s rule.
The large number of votes the two got, we are sure, reflect the loyalty they command among the mostly low ranking soldiers and policemen of the nation. It is a strong indication of the rolling rumble of silent protest among their rank and file. It showed that although they appeared cowed by the group of generals supporting GMA, they are unbowed and courageous enough to assert their democratic rights through the ballots. Something for GMA and her generals to think about in the future.
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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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