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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 Newsday article about the Sentosa scandal shows how scary the truth really is.
In that eye-opening expose, the owners of the largest commercial nursing homes in New York State allegedly used their political connections to gain ground over 27 ordinary, hard-working health care workers and their lawyer.
Overkill.
Here we have 27 lowly Filipino workers and a lawyer pitted against an American senior senator, an American district attorney, an American influential lawyer, a powerful and rich company, and the Philippine government itself.
What is the need for all that force to quell 26 nurses, 1 physical therapist, and a lawyer from Pangasinan?
Yes, there is a need.
For the owners of SentosaCare, they would even summon the powers of God himself if they could to battle the 27 workers and their counsel, because the owners know very well whom they are fighting.
They are fighting with the truth, and the truth always wins. No army on earth can challenge the power or truth. Therefore, the Sentosa 27 and their embattled lawyer should be comforted to know that they have the truth on their side and hence will never lose.
Remember David.
Could wealth and might defeat the truth?
If the allegations are true that SentosaCare is spending lots of money and pulling a lot of strings to spin a good PR image, then they are trying to win a losing battle. The American public is mature enough to distinguish between the gold-coated lie and the truth, and they will pay dearly for even trying to fool the public.
What SentosaCare should have done instead of fighting with all their might and magic, was to settle the matter administratively with the frustrated health workers. They should have solved the matter and prevented the issue from getting as big as it is now. They should have simply listened to the 27 health employees, instead of ignoring them the first time.
Perhaps it shows what kind of company they really are – discriminative and arrogant. Now, they can spend all their resources in fighting this case. However, in the end they will see defeat coming like it ‘s coming from David’s slingshot heading straight for their foreheads.
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Suing the USCIS for Naturalization Delay
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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)
There has been an increasing number of lawsuits against the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) in the past few years because of the long delays in the processing of naturalization applications.
Last year, over 2,500 lawsuits were filed compared to about 680 in 2005. In the current fiscal year, over 4,000 cases have already been filed.
In most of these lawsuits, the naturalization applicants have passed their immigration interviews but they have not taken their citizenship oaths because the FBI name checks have not been completed.
A name check is different from a criminal check which takes a much shorter time to complete. Name checks require checking the applicant’s name and date of birth. The search involves searching possible combinations of the first, middle and last names. It is an “around the clock” search.
Name checks were instituted after the 9/11 tragedy as an added security measure. In December 2002, the USCIS sent to the FBI for additional background checks 2.7 million names of immigration applicants.
In about 5 percent of the name checks, potential problems are found. About one percent of these cases are further subjected to scrutiny because of a “positive response” finding.
Over 300,000 name checks are currently in the pipeline. More than 60,000 of these cases have been waiting for more than 2 years.
The unreasonable delay has caused hardship to the applicants and this had led them to file lawsuits. One of these cases was a class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco, California in February 2007.
The California lawsuit sought to enforce a federal law that required the USCIS to decide their citizenship applications within 120 days of their naturalization interview. One of the plaintiffs stated that because of the delay in adjudicating his naturalization application he had not been able to bring his wife and four children to the U.S. for the last several years. Another plaintiff said that he had been prevented from enjoying the rights of citizenship.
Suing the USCIS is an available remedy for applicants who have been waiting for a long period of time. The Immigration and Naturalization Act specifically provides that if there is a failure to make a determination of the naturalization application before the end of the 120 day period on which the examination is conducted, then the applicant may apply to the U.S. District Court for a hearing on the matter.
The law further says that the court may decide the case, or remand the case to the USCIS for immediate adjudication.
The USCIS has argued that the 120 day period does not begin to run until the entire process, including the FBI check, is completed. The majority of the courts, however, have ruled that the 120 days are counted from the time of the initial interview.
This is also the ruling last September 14 by the Fifth Circuit Court. The court had previously sided with the USCIS but in a surprising turnabout, it held that indeed the 120 days start to run from the date of the interview.
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Led by thousands of Buddhist monks, clad in traditional saffron robes, Burmese citizens have spilled into streets, in people power demonstrations, against the corrupt four-decade old military junta.
Today’s massive “Saffron Revolt” boiled over, in less than a month, from 400 demonstrators who first complained timidly against fuel increases. Now, mile-long protest columns, from Mandalay to Taung Dwin Gyi, demand ouster of the brutal dictatorship.
The marches recall Mahatma Ghandi’s trek, in 1930 to assail the salt tax. And the 1986 People Power here spun off into Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Uprising”, Lebanon’s “Cedar Revolution”, Ukraine’s “Orange Rebellion” to Georgia’s “Rose Revolution.” Presidents from Bolivia, Peru, Argentina to Haiti tumbled, before peaceful citizen action in the 1990s.
But the blood-stained track record of Uzbekistan and Burma underscore there are no guaranteed happy endings for all people power golpes
In 1988, Rangoon devalued the kyat, triggering financial turmoil. The military fired on demonstrators. The generals didn’t bother with a body count. But over 3,000 died. Since then, an Orwellian dictatorship ruled Burma.
Today, “we are in uncharted territory,” British Ambassador Mark Canning told New York Times, “Stimulated by genuine economic hardship, ( the demos) are being done in a peaceful but very effective fashion.”
Indeed, misrule impoverished one of the region’s richest country in natural resources. A Burmese’s life expectancy is 60 years compared to a Singaporean’s 78. Infant mortality is 76, far greater than Vietnam’s 17. Maternal deaths are 360, nine times higher than Malaysia’s 41. And Burma has 36 doctors for every 100,000 citizens compared to 134 for the Philippines.
There’s no official state religion. Most of 54 million Burmese follow Theravada Buddhism. And successive governments associated themselves conspicuously with Buddhists. And there are over 400,000 monks who’re widely revered. Official data undercounts non-Buddhists,. They probably reach 30 percent but are discriminated against. Translations of the Koran and Bible in indigenous dialects, for example, are banned.
There’s no constitutional protection of religious freedom, for monks or minorities like Muslims, Christians, Hindus. The junta abrogated those freedoms with the charter in 1998, the International Religious Freedom Report 2007 says. “Government systematically restricted efforts, by Buddhist clergy, to promote human rights and political freedom.”
“Here in Burma, we are born afraid,” a senior monk told British Broadcasting Corporation..(“In the Philippines, there are 60 million cowards and two SOBs”, a US senator scoffed when the Marcos dictatorship seem invincible.)So, where does today’s audacity in Burma come from?
Pent-up grievances drive those masses of saffron robed monks and once-cowed citizens, despite curfews and military dispersal threats. A thousand filed past Aung San Suu Kyi’ guarded house where the Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been detained since 2003. “The Lady”, as Burmese call her, “came out of the house, with two other women and cried,” as the monks marched by. ”She prayed with them but did not speak”.
Today, people wave flags, including some bearing portraits of the fighting peacock symbol of the 1988 uprising. They hand out pictures of Burmese independence hero Aung San, deceased father of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Reuters reports.
They ignore threats from a junta apparently taken aback by outpouring. The censored “New Light of Myanmar” newspaper” quoted Religious Affairs Minister Brig. Gen. Thura Myint Maung warning: “Do not to break Buddhist "rules and regulations.
This turned ominous when government trucks warned of “enforcing the law by military dispersal.” It signals the junta’s startled realization that waiting for protests to lose steam didn’t work. Daily, the crowds grow. What has emerged is the strongest challenge since Aung San Suu Kyi won the elections by a landslide.
As the junta’s options rapidly narrow, the threat of violent reprisal mounts. Thus, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the "utmost restraint". So did the European Union that pressed for “launching a process of real political reform". The Dalai Lama backed the monks while urging the military to avoid violence. Sensitive about unrest on its flank, and hosting the 2008 Olympics, China makes noises about “stability and reform”.
“Burma has become an embarrassment to its nine partners in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,” the New York Times noted.. Increasingly blunt in calling for reform, carnage on Burma’s streets could jack up demands for unprecedented Asean expulsion.
“Since the 1970s, the trend has been …a gradual global shift from violent ‘people’s war’ to non-violent people’s power,” Jesse Walker notes in the study: “The Other Insurrections.” Everywhere, militaries are more reluctant to repress demonstrators, says Mexican author Elena Pontiawoska.
That cuts little ice with the generals who rule Burma : (1) General Than Shwe, 73, A former postal clerk, General Than Shwe, 73 became head of state in 1992 who suppressed dissent. ( 2) Maung Aye is xenophobe linked to drug lords in the Golden Triangle; and ( 3 ) General Soe Win, 58 who smashed the democracy party.
“It may too late to urge the generals to be calm. All bets are off. Even the Chinese will have no influence on what they do,” warns Burma expert David Mathieson. Will young Burmese officers shoot their own people?
If, and when, the generals spill blood, do we here just look the other way? ####
(E-mail: juanlmercado@gmail.com )
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Owners Withdrawing Homes From The Market
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Macrotrends in the housing industry are causing many homeowners problems about their homes. On top of this, predatory practices in the lending business are causing difficulties which otherwise should not happen. Cases of owners who have decided to sell their properties to escape plunging values are withdrawing their homes from the market in increasing numbers.
What happens often is owners who have made their decisions to sell are not acting fast enough and are, therefore, overtaken by developments such as the quick deterioration of market values and the rise in interest rates which decimates the number of able buyers.
The other causes of their change of mind are the predatory practices of unscrupulous brokers and agents that victimize the owners.
A common ploy is the use of multi-mortgages. During the boom in 2005-2007, lending expanded fast all over the US and especially in Florida, Nevada and California. In California the expansion caused brokers and agents o increase by two thirds over the last five years. Proportionately, shady transactions also increased.
Often, only the first and second mortgages are disclosed to the clients. The first is the main mortgage and the second usually covers the downpayment. But other costs and fees come in, fictitious and otherwise, and usually such expenses are not covered by the buyer's budget. To expedite the sale and make his commissions faster, the agent tends to understate such costs. These are covered by other loans which agents sometimes hide.
But the money has to come from somewhere, and so third, fourth, etc. loans are created.
When the day of reckoning comes, the owner has no choice but to get rid of his house.
California law requires that contracts be translated into one of the five languages used in the negotiations. The client's unfamiliarity with the language and especially with the legal technicality of the transaction contributes to the commission of fraud. A typical case involves a mortgage of $400,000 and a revolving credit line for $80,000 with a name bank. Shortly before closing, a third loan surfaced and was signed, and this was made by a third party other than the bank. The client complained and the broker assured him not to worry about it as he will be able to refinance it after a few months, which is not true.
The New York Times in an article writes about another typical loan. "A couple was sold a $745,000 house on a $4,000 a month salary. The first loan was a pay-option adjustable rate mortgage. The loan allows the borrowers to pay less than the interest due, adding the difference onto the balance so more is owned with each passing month. The interest rate on the loan was ten percent with a 15 percent up front fee added to the principal balance. That loan called fo the borrowers to make interest-only payments and pay off the full amount in two years."
When owners of problem properties are faced with difficulties, they decide to sell the house. But they fail to foresee the speed with which home prices would go down during these unstable times. On the average, homes bought 12 months ago have deteriorated in price 5%. And the bottom is not yet in sight.
The National Association of Realtors said purchases of previously owned homes dropped 4.3% in August. The annual sales rate fell to 5,5 million from 5.75 million in July, the steepest decline since March. Existing home sales is own nearly 13% over the last 12 months.
More bad news. The dismal housing market has started to affect consumer attitude. The percentage of consumers who plan to buy a car or a house in the next six months dropped from July. So now the bigger worry emerging is that this trend could overwhelm the national economy to start a recession.
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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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