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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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WASHINGTON-- Employers of Filipino nurses who petitioned the nurse to work in America must pay an additional $1,500 fee to fund a NEED program to help train American nurses in the U.S.
Filipino nurses , too must serve their country first before they would be allowed to work in the U.S., if the bill is signed into a law.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) announced Senate approval of his legislation to address one of the major causes of the nationwide nursing shortage – an insufficient number of nurse educators – by providing grants to colleges to improve their ability to educate nursing students. The legislation, added as an amendment to the Labor, Health and Human Services Appropriations bill, would create and fund a program modeled after the Nurse Education, Expansion, and Development (NEED) Act, which Durbin introduced on January 31, 2007.
"Nurses care for our children and grandchildren, our parents and other loved ones. We know the difference nurses make in our lives – and increasingly we are noticing the difference when we do not have enough of these dedicated men and women when we need them most," said Durbin.
"More needs to be done to boost our nursing schools in order to train the nurses we will need in the years to come."
Durbin offered his legislation as a second degree amendment to an amendment proposed by Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). The Schumer-Hutchison amendment would allow up to 61,000 foreign nurses to enter the country as green card holders.
The Durbin second-degree amendment requires each employer who successfully petitions for a nursing green card to pay a $1,500 fee. This fee would be used to back Durbin’s NEED Act program to provide grants to U.S. nursing schools for hiring nurse faculty, expanding training capacity and recruiting more students.
"Projections show that by the year 2020, our country’s nursing shortage will have grown to 1 million. Importing several thousand foreign nurses is only a band-aid solution to this projected shortage," said Durbin.
"But it is also a step that deflates any momentum towards finding real solutions for our domestic nursing crisis. My amendment is a reasonable compromise that will help both the hospitals in the short term and the domestic nursing supply in the long term."
Statistics paint a bleak a picture for the availability of nursing faculty now and into the future. Last year, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing surveyed more than 400 schools of nursing. They found that 66% of the schools reported vacancies on their faculty. An additional 15% said they were fully staffed but still needed more faculty to handle the number of students who want to be trained. It is expected that 200 to 300 doctorally prepared faculty will be eligible for retirement each year from 2005 through 2012, reducing nursing faculty while the need for qualified nurses continues to increase.
In Illinois, the number of qualified applicants being denied admission to nursing schools is growing. From 2002 through 2003, there were 502 qualified students rejected from Illinois nursing schools.
Last year, there were 1,900 students turned away because of lack of faculty and resources. And yet, in spite of the increasing number of eligible nursing school applicants, Illinois could be facing a shortage of over 21,000 nurses by 2020 because of a lack of nursing faculty.
Durbin’s amendment also contains two provisions to enhance global healthcare cooperation and to safeguard against a exodus of foreign healthcare workers from countries where they are critically needed.
A fantastically high number of Filipino nurses are leaving the Philippines each year, tens of thousands of them find work in America and other industrialized countries, leaving the health care system in the Philippines in dire need of competent nurses. The World Health Organization said the Philippines was the biggest supplier of nurses globally because of their English skills, smartness and competence.
The first provision would allow a healthcare worker who is a legal permanent resident in the U.S. to temporarily provide healthcare services in a country that is underdeveloped or that has suffered a disaster or public health emergency without jeopardizing his or her immigration status in the United States.
The second provision would require a foreigner who is petitioning to work in the U.S. as a healthcare worker to attest that he or she has satisfied any outstanding commitment to his or her own country under which the foreigner received money for medical training in return for a commitment to work in that country for a period of years. The goal of this provision is to ensure that foreign countries do not invest money in healthcare workers who then renege on commitments to work in their country without satisfying their commitment in some way, such as by a new voluntary agreement.
Durbin’s amendment is supported by the American Nurses Association and the American Association of Nursing Colleges
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CHICAGO – Filipino priest Rev. Rodney L. Rodis changed his plea from not guilty to guilty when he signed a 13-page plea agreement Friday (Oct.26) during a hearing before Judge Richard L. Williams of Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond.
“There was no heated exchanges, just series of standard questions to discern the voluntariness of the plea” during the hearing, according to Assistant United States Attorney Brian L. Whisler of the Eastern District of Virginia in an email.
“But there were at least a dozen or so parishioners plus the attorney for the local Diocese.”
In the plea signed by Whisler and AUS Attorney G. Wingate Grant on behalf of US Attorney Chuck Rosenberg and Assistant Federal Public Defender Robert J. Wagner on behalf of Reverend Rodis, Rodis agreed to Counts One and Eleven of the pending criminal indictment.
Count One charges Rodis with Mail Fraud and carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment, a fine of $250,000, a special assessment, and three years of supervised release.
Count Eleven charges the 51-year-old defendant with Money Laundering and carries a “maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment, fine the greater of $500,000, or twice the value of the laundered funds, a special assessment, and five years of supervised release.”
Sentencing is set on Feb. 21, 2008.
The agreement also said that the “defendant is satisfied that the defendant’s attorney has rendered effective assistance.”
Rodis, believed to be from Cagayan de Oro City in the Philippines, also agrees that his Catholic Diocese of Virginia had incurred losses of a least $400,000.
The indictment charged Rodis with embezzling more than $600,000 to support his double life as a family man in a neighboring county in Virginia. At the arraignment, he pleaded not guilty to eight count mail fraud, two-count wire fraud, three-count money laundering and forfeiture allegation.
Court records show that Rodis has a wife, Joyce Flores Sillador-Rodis, and they had two biological children residing at 5904 Watson Lane, Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Rodis was employed as a Catholic priest at St. Jude Church at 1937 Davis Highway, Mineral, Virginia; and at another church, the Immaculate Conception Church at Bumpass, Virginia. Both churches are under the Richmond Catholic Diocese.
The indictment papers added that Rodis “solicited contributions from parishioners to support church expenses, including building debt reduction, cemetery funds, religious education and other church operations.”
The scheme to defraud started from “September 2002, and continued through in or about 2006.”
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CHICAGO – A 29-yearold Filipino American and four others were killed in a fiery crash when his car exited the wrong way from Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago, Illinois early Sunday (Oct. 28) morning and collided with a vehicle, a BMW, carrying the four other victims, it was reported.
The Filipino American was identified as Frederick “Derick” Sy, 29, a Chicago native and Chicago resident, and son of Philippine-born couple of suburban Northbrook, Illinois.
The four others killed were identified only as Jorge Espinoza, 27, his three friends identified only as “Primitivo,” his girlfriend and a mutual friend identified only as Frida Perez. Espinoza and “Primitivo” are both from Lagos de Moreno, a town in Jalisco, Mexico.
Harold Sy, elder brother of Derick, told this reporter that he was shocked to learn about the death of his only sibling. “I still cannot make a sense of what happened to my great brother and friend. He is a very caring and loving person to his friends and co-workers at AthletiCo.”
Holding back tears, Harold, 32, an ophthalmologist, also expressed his and his family’s deepest sympathies to the families of the four others who died.”
Police investigations disclosed that Derick was driving his Volvo going west along Eisenhower Expressway at about 2 a.m. when it collided head-on with the BMW driven by Espinoza.
Espinoza and his three passengers were killed on the spot and their bodies were charred beyond recognition. Derick was rushed to the Northwest Hospital, where he died on arrival.
Harold said a funeral death certificate showed that his brother died of “multiple injuries secondary to automobile accident.” Results of autopsy are still pending. Derick came from a Halloween party with his coworkers.
Agnes Gamundoy, a family friend, told the Chicago Sun-Times, that Derick “did not drink at all. He did not drink, period. . . . He might have been tired or missed a turn."
Derick’s employer, AthletiCo, where he works as a “dedicated … physical therapist since 2003” and has become its Assistant Facility Manager at River Grove, Illinois, has put out a notice in its website, saying “From all of Derick’s friends and co-workers at AthletiCo, we would like to express our deepest condolences to his family and to the family of the victims of this terrible tragedy. Derick will be missed.”
Derick was an Illinois state-licensed physical therapist. He had a Bachelor’s Degree in Kinesiology from University of Illinois in Champaign and a master’s degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
“My brother took home some employment reviews of the employees so he could take them back to work Monday. He has every intention of going back to work before the accident.” Harold said. “He even bought his own condo and was planning to leave the home we share at Wicker Park in Chicago.”
Derick’s father, Alfredo P. Sy, is a doctor of medicine, who graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines. His mother, the former Hilda Macabalitaw, is a nurse, who graduated from the University of the Philippines. Both his parents were born in Manila.
Derick and his family visited relatives in Manila when Derick was 11 years old. Both Derick and Harold understand Tagalog.
Wake and viewing are scheduled on Wednesday from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. and Thursday from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Colonial Funeral Home at 8025 Golf Road, Niles, Illinois. He will be buried at the memorial cemetery at Skokie, Illinois after funeral ceremonies to be held on Friday at 9:30 a.m. at St. Catherine Laboure at Glenview, Illinois.
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