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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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IT is bad enough that Filipinos were discriminated on ‘Desperate Housewives’.
However, with the way some Filipino-Americans groups and individuals are acting in response to the issue, it seems that we deserve to be discriminated.
These groups and people are fighting for the limelight brought upon by the aired racial slur. Everyone wants to be the hero. Everyone is grandstanding. Everyone wants to take credit for being the defender of the brown Malay race.
It is sickening.
If these are the kinds of groups representing Filipino-Americans, ABC better not apologize.
Some people even claim that they were the ones who started the online petition demanding ABC’s apology. While, others decided to start their own online petition, just to be labeled as ‘starters’ and not join the original petition.
These people discredit one another and pull down people who are making strides in the fight against discrimination in the media. They are like crabs inside a woven basket desperately wreaking havoc with one another to make sure no one gets ahead.
If the writers of ‘Desperate Housewives’ want to put down Filipinos again for their next episode, they don’t need to be explicit about it. They just have to shoot a scene inside a crab restaurant and it is done.
Or better yet, a close up shot of a crab will do damage even more.
Perhaps, we really cannot handle issues like these very well.
Instead of being a unified force, what we do is expose our stupidity and disunity, thereby inviting further hatred to our people.
We cannot lie now. We have to accept that this is our nature–The nature of the crab.
It is ridiculous how an issue like the ‘Desperate Housewives’ slur can show how Filipinos can hate one another all in the name of credit.
Are we really that publicity-hungry?
Those guys at ABC are maybe laughing their heads off from what they are seeing.
Perhaps, the writers never really intended that racial punch line to be funny at all. Perhaps, they have anticipated that the joke will come in later – when the Filipinos fight among themselves over it. Perhaps, the punch line is happening right now.
So the joke is really on us.
Now, THAT is hilarious.
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Card Replacement Rule not yet Final
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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)
LAST August 22, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a proposed rule requiring holders of green cards without expiration dates to apply for a replacement.
It provided a thirty-day period or until September 21, 2007 for the public to submit written comments.
We have received information that the USCIS is not in a hurry to finalize the rule. Many have expressed their objections. And the USCIS is doubtful if it will be able to handle the huge volume of potential applications at this time.
A 120-day period to apply was imposed in the proposed rule. After this period, the USCIS would set a termination date for the validity of the cards.
Approximately 3 million such cards were issued before August 1989. 1.1. million bearers of these cards have become US citizens. The maximum number affected would therefore be approximately 1.9 million. The USCIS anticipates that about 1.15 million more will file for naturalization leaving about 750,000 permanent residents who will need to apply for a new card.
Critics have questioned the necessity of the plan especially that the USCIS had acknowledged that the existing old cards are compliant with the current laws. The cards are machine-readable and contain tamper-resistant features and biometric The USCIS said that national security consideration was behind the proposal. The program would enable it to issue more secure green cards, update cardholder information, conduct background checks and electronically store applicants’ biometric information that can be used for biometric comparison and authentication purposes.
But the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association (AILA) has characterized the plan objective as minor technological improvements which, although laudable do not present a significant basis to invalidate the cards.
AILA has further argued that while national security is an important priority, the plan is more of an administrative convenience and a way to pass the high cost of the technological upgrade to individuals who are not looking for any benefit. The cost of filing a replacement application (Form I-90) is $370.00.
AILA has been particularly concerned with the potential risk of imprisonment for any permanent resident who simply will not apply to replace his or her card. This failure to register will be a violation of the registration requirements under the Immigration and Nationality Act. “It would turn law-abiding residents into a new class of criminal aliens,” AILA said.
If the USCIS will push through with the program, AILA has suggested that the filing period be stretched to several years, the filing fee be waived and an extensive publicity campaign be conducted.
In addition, the USCIS should not require the submission of criminal conviction documents before processing the replacement application and should not apply newer and harsher immigration laws in adjudicating the applications.
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AT the weigh-in last Friday, Oct. 5th, at the Mandalay Bay Hotel Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, Mexican three-division world champion Marco Antonio Barrera wore a black robe imprinted in front with a huge image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the venerated and miraculous Mexico’s patron saint. Filipino three-division world champion Manny Pacquiao was hanging a Holy Rosary on his neck.
It may be safe to assume that both fighters were invoking a higher power to beat each other. After all, the bible says that when God is on your side, nobody can beat you. Just ask the King of Aram and Elisha in 2 Kings 6:8-22.
I noticed during the bout of Pacquiao (45-3-2 win-loss-draw, 34 KO’s) and Barrera (63-6, 42 KO’s) every time Pacquiao answers the bell at the start of the round, Pacquiao would make the sign of the cross while Barrera would not.
As events turned out, God might have stayed on Pacquiao’s side when boxing judges issued a unanimous verdict for Pacquiao to retain the 130-pound WBC International Super Featherweight title in the non-title bout.
DO NO HARM
Just like Elisha, who did not mean any harm to the soldiers who were dispatched to arrest him, Pacquiao told a post-fight press conference that he thanked God, he did not inflict harm on Barrera, 33, or on each other, meaning a lasting or permanent injury. And as good sports, they shook hands and consider each other friends. The press conference was supervised by Magna Media International, which accommodated ethnic media, like the Filipino Express.
One of the Philippine officials, who came to extend Pacquiao, 28, moral support, also noticed the God-fearing trait of Pacquiao. Former Manila Mayor and now Environmental and Natural Resources Sec. Jose “Lito” Atienza, who was at the ringside during the fight, did not hide his sentiment to this columnist: “Manny again made all Filipinos around the world proud and happy. He continues to be an inspiration to every Filipino. Si Manny ay talagang tunay na Pilipino. Magaling. Matalino. Makatao. Makadios at Maka-kalikasan. (Manny is a real Filipino. Skillful. Intelligent. Compassionate. Godly and pro-environment.)”
SAVED BY THE BELL
For his part, Vice President Noli de Castro, who was also at the ringside, had good words for Manny’s fighting skills. He said in Taglish, “Although, hindi natin napatulog (si Barrera), lahat ng points dapat mapunta kay Manny. Walang kaduda-duda, talaga lang na-sasave ng bell. Pero ilang rounds na malapit na niyang mapatulog. (Although, we were not able to knock (Barrera) down, all the points should go to Manny’s favor. No doubt, (Barrera) was just saved by the bell. In some rounds, he (Barrera) should have already been knocked down.)”
At a pre-fight interview, Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach told this columnist that there is a likelihood that Manny Pacquiao is not hanging his gloves anytime soon.
Mr. Roach, 47, said Pacquiao has two more years of boxing career left in him.
Instead of turning into a boxing promoter like Oscar de la Hoya, Manny plans to breathe life into his failed political career, Roach said.
STAGING COMEBACK
Perhaps, Manny would like to redeem himself by winning the very few fights he lost. In the words of his Top Rank promoter Bob Arum, while Manny has beaten mostly men, there is only one – a woman – who has so far defeated him – his congressional opponent in the second district of South Cotabato that includes his native Gen. Santos City – who had people to count the votes. Mr. Arum, a lawyer by profession, told this columnist that if Manny decides to keep his 130-pound weight, Manny has an option to fight the winner of the WBA-WBO champion Juan Diaz and IBF champion Julio Diaz lightweight unification fight at Chicago’s suburban Hoffman Estates, Illinois on Oct. 13 in a Don King promotion. Or the HBO Joan Guzman (27-0) vs. Humberto Soto (42-5-2) WBO Junior Lightweight winner on Nov. 17, 2007; Or the winner of the WBC super featherweight champ Juan Manuel Marquez (47-3-1 with 35 KOs record) fight with Rocky Juarez (27-3 and 19 KOs) that was earlier cancelled. If he wants to go up the 135-pound weight, Arum said he can match Manny with WBC Lightweight champion and Chicago native David Diaz.
“I’M JUST ORDINARY BOXER”
These match-ups will be a bonanza to Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotion, who has contracts with some of these boxers.
One media representative, sizing up the ego of Manny Pacquiao after beating Barrera, asked Manny if he agrees with the widely reported billing that he is the “best pound-for-pound” fighter alive, Mr. Pacquiao demurred, saying “I’m just an ordinary fighter who can fight the best fighter in the world. I don’t want to put into my head that I am popular.”
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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"THE night cannot get darker after midnight" is an old Burmese proverb. But it did in 1988 and 1990, says Andrew Marshall in The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire. That was when the xenophobic junta unleashed the tatmadaw (armed forces) on citizens seeking democratic space. Some 3,000 were killed.
Burma’s generals proved, this month, that even Stygian darkness can be deepened, . It’s soldiers smashed the People-Power style “Saffron Revolution” led by Buddhist monks. Already beggared by junta misrule, the country turned into a nation of eerie empty monasteries and untallied desaparecidos.
The “disappeared”, British Broadcasting Corporation reports, range from six to ten thousand. Miranda Rights of the Accused cards don’t exist in a country where the military has been conditioned, over four decades, into believing only they can save the nation. Filipino coup plotters share that delusion.
The tatmadaw is “a tough, self-contained institution, cemented by fear and privilege,” the New York Times’ Seth Mydans writes. Budget for the military and ethnic militia is seven times what government spends for health. “Soldiers earn more than civilians, send their children to the best schools and have brighter career prospects than civilians. They also have opportunities to tap into the gray economy of graft.”
Diplomats give credible estimates of the “disappeared.” They exceed Philippine martial law arrests in September 1972. Desperate Argentinian mothers stenciled the word desparecidos into today’s vocabulary of terror. But Argentenians didn’t vanish, in comparable numbers, in so short a time, as Burmese victims did.
“There’s great concern over night-time raids, arbitrary arrests, mass relocations and beatings being committed by security and non-uniformed elements,” UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari stressed in his report to the Security Council. “The real death toll could be much higher.”
Our streets are “normal”, Burma’s Ambassador Kyaw Tint Swe insisted to ward off a possible Security Council decision this week. This is normalcy of the graveyard. Budhhist monks, in fact, disappeared from the streets. Concertina barbed wire, strung around Shwedagon and Sule pagodas, were only removed this week.
This would be comparable to padlocking Our Lady of Perpetual Help shrine and the Muslim mosque in Quiapo. Monasteries of Carmelites, Benedictines to Pink Sisters would be forcibly emptied. Filipinos will gag at this Orwellian image.
Burma is probably the richer member of Asean, in natural resources. It has, for example, three trillion cubic meters of natural gas, plus three billion barrels of oil. Yet, has misrule saddles it with fuel shortages. The “Saffron Revolution” started in August, when the junta jacked up fuel prices by 500% overnight --. roughly half the monthly wage of workers.
Health disparities are stark..The average Burmese’s life expectancy is 60 years compared to a Singaporean’s 78, UN’s Human Development Report reveals. In an agriculturally endowed but undeveloped land, chronic hunger shoves many to premature graves. Of every 1,000 Burmese infants, 106 will die before marking their fifth birthday.
Next door Thailand has whittled that down to a fifth: 21.
“Lack of money is the root of all evil,” George Bernard Shaw once said. And where the junta denies money shows how it “saves” the country.
For health, Malaysia allocates almost five times what Burma spends, i.e. a miniscule 0.5 percent of its GDP.( The Philippines budgets 1.4 percent ). Thus, 9 out of 10 Malaysian mothers have skilled medical personnel during delivery. In Burma, only five out of ten do. Of every 100,000 Burmese mothers, 360 will die during child-bearing, compared to Malaysia’s 31.
Education is a major trigger for development.. But the Burmese junta blacks out data on what it spends for all levels of schooling: primary to graduate school. Universities have been shut down. And attendance at primary schools is sporadic. Darkness from ignorance is darker than midnight.
Burma’s “triumphant” generals clone this sorry historical experience. This underscores the significance of what Philippine courts are doing to stomp the junta virus here, given a presidency denies, but acts, as if held hostage by military power brokers. Magdalo mutineers, perennial coup plotters, and even some in the “chain of command”, are delude themselves that as :“protectors of the state, they’re a state unto themselves”.
Thru the “writ of amparo”, the Supreme Court would strip away the dodge, used by the military, to dodge accountability for desparecidos.. The Court of Appeals is ratcheting pressure on Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon to obey a court order : make public findings of a military investigation into the disappearance of activist Jonas Burgos.
Waving away feeble excuses, Court of Appeals Justice Rosalinda Vicente asked: . “Can General Esperon not tell the difference between right and wrong?”. Well, neither could Generals Than Shwe, Maung Aye and Soe Win.
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Disturbances in Myanmar and Manila
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TWO weeks ago, one of the panic signs over the world economic condition was witnessed in staid London when depositors of a Northern Rock branch in Kingston, England lined up on the sidewalk in a race to withdraw their deposits. The incident was triggered by what probably is an innocent business announcement that the bank could no longer raise money because of the widening credit crisis. Very likely, the announcement was routine as part of a common loan practice. But the growing tension in the financial markets which started in the US as a part of the mortgage crisis and spread across the Atlantic to England resonated as a threat to the hard earned savings of the bank depositors. The panic lasted a few days despite the assurance of the Bank of England (British central bank) that it was ready to help any bank needing assistance.
Such emergencies would not be unusual if it happened in Manila which is more vulnerable and panic-sensitive especially during these unstable economic and political times in the country. Then last week, after 15 years since the last political upheaval in neigboring Burma, or Myanmar as it is now called, the rumbling social volcano seething beneath the surface broke out and exploded into civil strife on the streets of Rangoon, the capital. Led by 100 thousand saffron-robed Buddhist monks, the politically repressed Burmese rioted and fought soldiers who fired their guns at the crowds killing scores.
Myanmar has been under the rule of a military junta for years. Its youth has probably never known how to live in a democracy. Normally when a population has been repressed for such a long time, the chances of an undemocratic regime to survive improve. Except in the case of Myanmar, the economy was mismanaged and poverty was prevalent. And of course, repression naturally goes against the grain of any people.
Most dictatorships undertake to carry out programs to "dumb down" the governed. They make it appear that this is the normal way of living. This has been subtly being attempted in the Philippines., but it's not succeeding. No matter how sophisticated the program, no matter how much the ruler spends for it, the people see through the drama.
And so as it happened in Myanmar, will it happen in Manila, as it did happen already in the past during Ferdinand Marcos' reign. It's just a matter of time.
The world economic conditions are not helpful to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. The widening credit squeeze that was spawned by the mortgage crisis in the US is worsening. The Philippines with its low productivity and great dependence on foreign credit is most vulnerable. Its vaunted wellspring from money remittances of its prime export - labor - is fragile. As economies worsen, countries that absorb Filipino workers will likewise deteriorate. So what happens to its vaunted export?
Without considering new job creations in other countries that absorb Filipino labor, the expected slowdown of the US economy is bound to produce hardship in the Philippines. How many kith and kin do Filipino families in the the US, for example, send regular support back home to assist with groceries and school tuition? When the job situation in America goes bad, living conditions of these families back home suffer. With the prevailing poverty back home, a few more notches of belt tightening are bound to cause such families further hardship.
The question that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should ponder is how fast the Philippine economy could unravel to produce the street disturbances now seen in Myanmar. The answer is much faster. The celfone industry in Manila is more advance. The wonders of texting, mastered by millions of Filipinos, are unbelievable. In our last visit to Manila this month, we saw a young Filipino managing to talk to two celfones at the same time.
In Myanmar, a hundred thousand simple -living monks led the people in street demonstrations. Who are their equivalent in Manila? Not the more soft-living Catholic priests. We have never seen a Catholic priest robed in simple saffron-colored "katsa".
When discussing political pay-offs with a group in Manila, we heard the remark that probably over half of all the priests receive regular dole-outs from Gloria Macapagal Arroyo one way or the other. When pushed by repressive poverty, it's the masses and some soldiers who have proven equal to this task.
So a reprise of the street disturbances of Myanmar in Manila is not impossible. Even in the face of soldiers' guns.
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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
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Telephone: (818) 543-5800
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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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