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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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THE Fourth of July is observed in the Philippines as Philippine-American Friendship Day, to commemorate the date when the United States recognized the Republic of the Philippines as a sovereign state.
Here in Jersey City, the Filipino American community even holds a parade and a street fair every year to celebrate this special relationship between the two countries. But like any other relationship, the RP-US ties have gone through a lot of sacrifices and hardships. And before we take this friendship for granted, let us recall how this special relationship started. For it was us, Filipinos, who bore the brunt of these sacrifices and hardships.
This relationship started with a war: the Philippine-American War from 1898 to 1901. During this three-year war, more than 500,000 Filipinos out of a population of eight million were killed. The number of fatalities during this time far outnumbered the number of Filipinos killed during the three hundred years of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines.
This friendship also had to endure duplicity. While publicly proclaiming teaching us the ways of democracy, the US government suppressed all forms of nationalism such as the display of flags and singing of nationalist songs.
This relationship also survived blackmail. Despite pledging undying love and being a faithful friend during World War II, the US government refused to send war reparation money to the Philippines until the Filipino government agrees to sign lopsided economic treaties with the US, and to extend the stay of US military bases in the Philippines for 99 years.
This special tie that binds also went through abandonment. Despite an earlier promise to Filipino soldiers that they will be accorded the same rights and privileges enjoyed by American soldiers if they fight side-by-side with the US against the Japanese in World War II, the US government has yet to fulfill that promise.
The Philippines really had to go through a lot to earn the US’ friendship. This fact should not be lost on us Filipinos as we observe 61 years of Filipino-American friendship.
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July 2007 Changes In Immigration Filing
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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)
SEVERAL changes in the filing of immigration applications will take effect this July. Applicants should take note of these changes to preserve their eligibility for immigration benefits and also to avoid processing delays.
Labor Certification as of July 16, 2007
Labor Certification will be valid only for 180 days unlike before when they were valid indefinitely.
The validity period is counted from the time of the approval or certification by the Department of Labor. Those certified prior to July 16, 2007 will be valid through January 12, 2008.
Labor Certifications are needed to file the immigrant visa petitions (I-140) in most employment-based second and third preference categories. They have to be filed with the I-140 petition before their expiration.
Substitution of beneficiaries will no longer be allowed although those substitute petitions filed prior to July 16, 2007 will be adjudicated. Substitution of an alien named on a pending or approved labor certification with another prospective alien employee has been allowed and this benefited the subsequent employee by preserving the previously established priority date.
Another provision in the new Department of Labor regulation is the prohibition of the sale, barter or purchase of permanent labor certifications and applications. The rule requires the employers to pay the cost of preparing, filing and obtaining labor certifications.
Filing Fee as of July 30, 2007
There will be a huge increase in filing fees. Applications have to be postmarked on July 29, 2007 to be charged the lower filing fees.
Examples of the increase are: I-130 for family petitions from $180 to $355; I-140 immigrant workers petition from $195 to $475.
I-485 adjustment of status with employment authorization and advance parole from $675 to $1,010 and N-400 naturalization from $330 to $675.
Direct Filing as of July 30
To coincide with the fee increase, petitions and applications will be filed with the service center that will process them, based on the place of temporary employment or place of residence. I-140 as well as I-485 with I-131 and I-765 will be filed with the Nebraska Service Center or the Texas Service Center unlike now where all filing are with the Nebraska Service Center.
I-129F will be filed with either the Vermont Service Center or the California Service Center depending on where the petitioner resides and regardless of whether its for a K-1 fiancee or a K-3 spouse. At the present, K-1 is filed with all the four service centers and K-3 with the Chicago lock box.
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Reinventing The RP Military
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CHICAGO -- The recent victory of ex-military men in the senatorial elections was a testament that military-trained movers and shakers of the Philippine establishment will be there to stay.
So, what to do?
First, there should be an acceptance of the truism that if you cannot beat them, join them. It is now a sad fact of Philippine life, where students trained to “serve, protect and defend” graduate to become either lawmakers or would compete for highly trained but clout-challenged civilian jobs.
And second, there should be a re-invention of the curricula in some of the military schools, notably the Philippine Military Academy.
The Philippine Department of Education, if it has jurisdiction over the PMA, should add more political science and public administration courses (in the Philippines, these are called subjects) in its current make up.
It has been a mantra that the military should never be politicized because it could upset the Constitutional mandate of civilian supremacy over the military.
But there was nothing the military could do to ignore it. The civilian government provided the opportunity for the military to step up the plate.
Reluctant role
When President Marcos declared martial law, the military was reluctantly thrust into a role that appeared to have given them edge over civilians when the military carried out the padlocking of the Philippine Congress and the Fourth Estate, also known as the press, and rounding up members of the opposition.
The military loved their role; they thought they were the proverbial carabaos. The military did not realize that they were just houseflies buzzing over the ears of the carabaos.
When Marcos can no longer control the military, it took his own defense secretary (now Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile) and Maj. General-turned President Fidel V. Ramos, assisted by then Colonel-turned Sen. Gregorio Honasan, to turn against Marcos to stop further military abuses. Fortunately, for the military, it was the military – the military rebels, that is – who redeemed the good name of the military, when the Filipino people went to the streets to support them during the People Power Revolution in 1986.
As a result, the first military general – Ramos – was rewarded by the Filipino people by electing Ramos president of the Philippines.
Return of the generals
Now, the military is unwittingly creeping back to power as the embattled government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was accused of cheating her way to the presidency, has rewarded those who supported her by appointing former generals to Cabinet and other sensitive positions.
To stop the march of generals back to power under the Arroyo administration or future administrations, the Philippine Congress should pass a law that grants the generals handsome retirement benefits that will not tempt them to accept civilian jobs.
In the words of General MacArthur, soldiers should just fade away during their retirement so young and upcoming officers can move up thru the ranks.
Now, if Congress has no money to fund the golden parachutes that will take care of the generals in their retirement, then, it can extend the retirement age of the generals a little longer so their talents will not be wasted.
But if the generals would still like to pursue civilian jobs beyond their retirement, the political science and public administration courses should be handy for them if they run and win elective posts or accept government positions.
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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Caudillos In Coat And Tie
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“AT THE age of 4, with paper hats and wooden swords, we’re all generals,” actor Peter Ustinov recalls. “But some of us never outgrow it.” That’s a point stressed by the Inquirer editorial, “Sir, no sir!” last Sunday.
At election’s end, possibly four Philippine Military Academy (PMA) graduates could be among the 23 senators. This is historically unprecedented. But will these “mistahs” [military academy schoolmates] get the message that voters, in a country where family dynasties monopolize privilege, telegraphed?
For starters, these four may organize a “Cavaliers Club.” It’d clone the “Wednesday Group” of senators whose swing vote often proved crucial. We think alike, Sen. Panfilo Lacson says of Gregorio Honasan and Navy Lt. Antonio Trillanes. If launched, the Cavaliers may “forge a consensus on issues, perhaps, even vote as one,” adds Sen. Rodolfo Biazon.
Yet, they’ve never been “on the same side of history,” the Inquirer noted. “The last thing a nation with a weak historical sense needs” is a clutch of caudillos, whose coat and ties can’t blur contrasting agendas. Indeed, the most important of all history lessons is that men do not learn much from them, Aldous Huxley once grumbled.
A by-the-book Marine general, Biazon stomped on coup plotters. In contrast, Honasan’s fingerprints surfaced on coup attempts, from “God Save The Queen” to the Magdalo mutiny. “All the coups that he launched failed -- a world record of sorts,” Yale University’s study “Closer Than Brothers” points out.
Lacson’s rise to power started from the Marcos dictatorship’s torture chambers, the same study adds. And Trillanes denies that detained former President Joseph Estrada bankrolled Magdalo’s contribution to Filipino entrepreneurship: “coups for rent.”
“The worst thing about the [Cavaliers] idea, however, lies in the message it sends,” the Inquirer added.
“It says to PMA graduates, even those who mistakenly believe they’re entitled to exercise political leadership: Stage a coup. Launch a mutiny. If you make it to the Senate, our exclusive club has a seat reserved for you.”
That’d buttress further the military mind. All too often, it is authoritarian and mechanically subservient, scholar Samuel Huntington warned. Even in the best of times, this mind-set bugs democratic governance.
In a “soft state” like the Philippines, this problem is exacerbated. “If those who have this mind-set dominate the governing elite, democratization and transition from [dictatorship] suffers,” Dr. Carolina Hernandez wrote earlier in “Public Policy.”
Look at Burma’s brutal junta. Liberties took a beating after Prapahullajom Khao (Thailand’s version of the PMA) officers sent tanks into Bangkok. Distorted mind-sets on Military Commission No. 1 sentenced former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. to death by musketry, even when civilian courts were operating.
President Manuel L. Quezon “was always wary of military involvement in politics,” Dr. Alfred McCoy recalls in the Yale study. In 1936, Quezon set up the PMA in the pattern of West Point, Sandhurst and St. Cyr. It would “establish a corps of professional officers … and thus deny control over the nation’s arsenals to established political elites, whether nationalist attorneys from University of the Philippines or corporate executives from Ateneo.”
The PMA’s first graduates fought in World War II and hewed to the constitutional chain of command. But Marcos uncorked the genie’s bottle. No PMA class was more brutalized than Class ’71 (to which Lacson and Honasan belonged), the Yale study notes. “Among [its] 85 graduates … at least five practiced torture, six were murdered… They were the ultimate creatures of martial law.”
“Constitutional reflexes” of caudillos atrophy, the late National Scientist Dioscoro Umali noted. “They’re oblivious to the irony that their creed bastardizes Mao Zedong’s axiom. Democracy, they told us, grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
We saw that, too, in the “Rolex 12.” Two civilians, plus 10 generals, including Fabian Ver, helped Ferdinand Marcos clamp down martial law and were gifted with watches, along with booty. Do Juan Ponce Enrile and Eduardo Cojuangco burnish their Rolexes today, given their collaboration’s consequences?
Military politicking left an Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) that is today the wimp of Asean armed forces. “Creeping militarization” of the bureaucracy, from President Fidel V. Ramos to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s watch, continues.
The majority of officers remain committed to constitutional governance. They refused to participate in the last coup attempts, although Honasan, Trillanes et al. whooped it along. Nonetheless, the military mind-set persists.
The AFP intelligence service chief, Maj. Gen. Delfin Bangit twice skipped hearings called by the Commission on Human Rights on the abduction of activist Jonas Burgos. He finally appeared, only to scoff that such abductions were “lower-level issues.” His talents and time were applied to “national issues like terrorism.”
Strip away the caudillo jargon. This is raw disdain for human life and rights and rejects accountability. For Burma’s Bassein prison or Iraq’s Abu Ghraib jail, this may be standard. But here, 21 years after People Power? The AFP’s commander in chief, after all, claims she hews by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. The Inquirer editorial reminds the Cavaliers to get the message right, despite hobbles of their mind-sets.
“How poor the country,” as Latin writer Jose San Martin says, “that must suffer gloriously triumphant generals.”
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Political Killings Issue Between GMA And Military
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AMONG the serious mistakes committed by the administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, if proven true, are the political extrajudicial killings which have victimized journalists and members of militant groups. By this time, the murders are still continuing and would probably be numbering about a thousand. Excluded are the Philippine versions of the “desaparecidos”, those who vanished without a trace under dictators in South America.
This is happening inspite of the outcry of international human rights groups who have taken notice as early as three years ago. And also despite pledges of the Arroyo goverhment to investigate and curb it. GMA, as apparently a token response, created a civilian commission to look into the murders. The body, called the Melo Commissiion, put out a report linking the military to the killings. But the commission also complained about the non-cooperation of the military officials, who kept pointing at the communist New Peoples Army as the guilty party. Nothing came out of the probe.
Recently, the link to the military received a confirmation as three retired generals reportedly implicated the government in the summary executions. The generals alleged that two years ago, military conferences were being held to discuss extrajudicial executions to combat the communist threat. Blame was being laid on the left-leaning party-list political party Bayan Muna, whose members were being murdered.
Analysts have drawn the conclusion that military excesses were encouraged by the lattitude being granted to the group of generals who were implicated in the election cheating that enabled GMA to win the 2004 presidential elections. Reports have been made that since 2004, Malacanang had ceded major political decision-making to these generals with the sole objective being the political survival of GMA. These generals were not only treated as untouchables but promoted to high civilian positions.
The same analysts have also pointed to the possibility that these generals could as a self-serving strategy be setting up GMA alone as a patsy for the killings. This possible conflict is indicated by a move of National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, a dyed-in-the-wool GMA loyalist. Gonzales claimed AFP Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon cannot invoke Executive Order 464, or the presidential gag order, to refuse to attend a congressional investigation of the “Hello Garci” 2004 election cheating tape and the extrajudicial killings, as these are not security issues. Esperon last week warned he would invoke the executive order if the new senator, Navy Lt. Trillanes, decides to call AFP leaders to the investigation.
Arroyo has been going over her tracks on the issue of extra judicial killings, not only because of the international criticism but also of the threat of local critics to bring up a case to the world courts. Some quarters have even cited the case of former Argentina President Isabelita Peron, who is now under house arrest in Spain for her alleged involvement in the formation of death squads in l976 to kill her enemies.
Senator Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan, who was reelected last month to the Senate and former GMA ally, in a turn-around said she holds a key to solving the illegal murders. The senator said she could ask the generals who are squealing to come out publicly to testify.
Supreme Court Justice Reynato Puno has come out in the open to support a proposal for a summit meeting to put an end to the political murders. At this stage of the game and after her resounding defeat in the last mid-term elections, GMA can no longer treat the extra-judicial killings issue with her usual Goebbel- like repeated lying style. The Filipinos won’t let her.
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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:
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219 North Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California 91203
Telephone: (818) 543-5800
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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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