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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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PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is the ruler of magic. Repeatedly, she never fails to demonstrate her magical powers.
From quelling revolts to pulling up an imaginary ‘good’ economy, she dazzles the whole world with her grace and skills. However, no magic trick in her sleeve could ever compare to her almost messianic feat: Raising the dead.
A few weeks back, Marilou Ranario, the Filipino domestic worker in Kuwait was sentenced to death for killing her Kuwaiti employer. She was so close to death, her prison guards started to refer to her in the past tense.
Then comes Gloria.
From her European trip, she managed to squeeze in a side trip to Kuwait to talk to the Amir for a possible commutation of Ranario’s death sentence.
It was akin to the raising of Lazarus, according to some observers. She weaved her magic on the mesmerized Amir, like a snake charmer, emitting mysterious hypnotizing vapors. Then it was done– Ranario is alive. The Amir commuted Ranario’s sentence to life imprisonment. From being a ‘was’, Ranario returned to being ‘is’. Gloria saves.
One observer commented that while Arroyo descended from her plane at the NAIA, she was like a goddess descending from the clouds in full glory.
What transpired between the president and the Amir will never be disclosed. Perhaps, Arroyo promised the Amir barrels of oil as a gift, or a box of sand from Boracay, who knows. The point is, Ranario will see the New Year. She will spend her life behind bars in a foreign land, though.
If Arroyo has one last rabbit to pull from her top hat, that should be making the country a better place to live in. If she could make the economy better, there will be few OFWs out there risking their lives for a higher pay. If she could pull a ‘Moses’ and retrieve her scattered people, and bring them to the Promised Land, she will be a candidate for sainthood in 50 years. ‘Santa Gloria’. It has a nice ring to it.
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H-2B visas still available
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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)
THE United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that as of December 4, 2007, H-2B visas are still available. Out of the 33,000 allotted for the second half of the current fiscal year, only 2,729 beneficiaries have been approved and 4,436 are pending.
H-2B visas are reserved for non-agricultural workers who enter the U.S. to perform temporary services for an employer on a one-time, seasonal, peak load or intermittent basis. These workers are usually needed in the construction, health care, lumber, manufacturing, food service/ processing and resort/ hotel industries. Many Filipinos enter the U.S. under this nonimmigrant visa classification.
Annual Limit
There is an annual limit of 66,000 H-2B visas. This cap was first imposed in 1990 but it was first met only in fiscal year 2004. The USCIS employs a random selection process similar to the H-1B petitions whenever the number is exhausted in a particular year.
In response to the increasing need for H-2B workers, Congress passed the “Save Our Small and Seasonal Business Act of 2005” (SOS Act). This law provided an exemption from the numerical limitation for those who had been counted in any of the previous three fiscal years. These workers are also called returning workers.
The SOS Act divided the 66,000 into two – 33,000 in the first half that starts in October and 33,000 in the second half that starts in April. This was intended to evenly distribute the H-2B workers between the summer and winter seasons. The law expired on October 1, 2006 but was extended through October 1, 2007. No extension has been passed for the current fiscal year although there is a pending bill that seeks to extend the exemption until 2009.
Urgent Need
There is certainly a need to make the exemption permanent. In fact, there is an urgency to pass a comprehensive immigration reform law that will address America’s need for short term and long term workers.
Filing Procedure
The H-2B process starts with the filing of a temporary labor certification with the appropriate state employment office not more than 120 days prior to the employer’s needs. The approved labor certification or Department of Labor (DOL) statement of no certification is then attached to the I-129 petition that is submitted to the USCIS. A labor certification does not guarantee the approval of the H-2B petition. On the other hand, a negative decision on the labor certification application does not automatically result in a denial of the petition.
Multiple beneficiaries may be included in a single H-2B petition if they will all be performing the same work for the same period in the same location.
The H-2B worker is allowed a maximum of not more than a year. In extraordinary cases, two one-year extensions may be allowed.
No Dual Intent
Unlike in H-1B cases, the filing of an immigrant petition or permanent labor certification is not allowed for H-2B workers. The rule cannot be circumvented by the filing for permanent resident status on behalf of the alien in a different job.
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Botched putsch Arroyo's gain
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SOMETIMES, success in politics is like engaging in sports. There are hits and misses. If you lose in an election, there is always the next. If you lose in a game, there is another game next time. It needs a lot of preparation, planning and timing. Foremost in planning is avoiding the causes that lead to losses by the candidate or other candidates. Committing the same mistakes by previous losers will guarantee another failure in the next election. Crafting creative ways to avoid mistakes could lead to success.
When Navy officer Antonio Trillanes tried to step into the limelight in 2003 to expose the endemic and systemic corruption in the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo at the Oakwood Premier Ayala apartment in Makati City, he knew that he could either succeed or fail. The barometer of success would have been the big turnout of people to protect him from getting arrested by the Arroyo government. But as a result, his call for people to come out did not generate enough supporters the way it did for EDSA I and EDSA 2.
So, Mr. Trilllanes had to suffer the consequence of his action by returning to jail. He should be man enough to face the music. Instead of looking for ways to come into power, he should focus on seeking a good legal advice that would free him up from detention.
When Trillanes milked his newfound "15 minutes of fame" and decided to do a Ninoy Aquino and ran for office from detention, it may have worked when he was elected senator. But it did not give him a complete satisfaction that would give him his freedom.
So, when he again took the plunge to free himself by leading a march last Nov. 29 inside the Manila Peninsula hotel in Makati, it yielded the same result: failure.
NO PLANNING
All because he failed to cntrive "Plan A" or "Plan B." His adventurism caught the people by surprise. And the stalemate gave the Philippine government an opportunity to isolate him and arrest him. Now, he is in much deeper trouble as more charges will be heaped on him.
With Trillanes' failed caper, it just strengthened the hand of the Philippine government, who can now adopt a more rigid standard operating procedure to stop copycats out to disrupt society.
Firstly, the government will do well not to pardon Trillanes because treating him with kid gloves will encourage other mutineers.
Secondly, the government should spend the military aid it gets from foreign governments, notably the United States, by forming an elite force that can neutralize the firepower of a group of military mutineers supporting a government rebellion. This elite force should be trained in such a way that it can respond at a moment's notice of any heavily-armed uprising in any part of the Philippines.
Thirdly, the military and police commands should spend intelligence funds the way they should. These funds should be used to buy raw information and should be passed on the operational commands if confirmed. These funds should not be kept by police or military commanders for themselves.
If the military and police can be a step ahead of an impending trouble by suppressing it right away, they will not be able to give the press a reason to cover an event. And they have no press freedom issue to deal with.
But if the military or police fail to snuff out trouble, they have no business arresting newsmen since the military and police have no business stopping newsmen from covering an unfolding event.
And fourthly, the government should stop committing graft and corruption left and right that could give Trillanes and other copycats reasons to demand its resignation. If the government discovers commission or ommission of grafts within its rank, it should not condone these grafters by pardoning them before completing the terms of their sentences. Let grafters suffer the consequence of their actions.
BUYING BUILDING INSURANCE
Both the national and local governments should start using payment for building permits to buy premiums for building insurance.
Because of the failure of the Makati police and military from stopping the marchers towards the Manila Peninsula, it should be the Makati municipal and national governments' responsibility to pay the physical damages of the Manila Peninsula.
When the Manila Peninsula paid for permit to operate to the Makati City Hall, there was an implied assurance of peace and stability in the area. So, in case the damage to private property, like Manila Peninsula, is caused by commission or omission of the Makati police or military, the financial responsibility for the payment of physical properties of the Manila Peninsula should come from the insurance companies, not the Makati or Filipino taxpayers. (lariosa_jos@ sbcglobal.net)
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THE grime-streaked beggar at the Redemptorist church door wouldn't budge. Mass had just ended. If delayed, I'd miss that overbooked flight for Bangkok. As a "martial law refugee", Thailand was my United Nations duty station for 17 years. Four of the five kids were flying in from US schools to join us for Christmas.
Shifting his battered can, the beggar persisted. "Don't you remember me?" Seeing the blank look in my eyes, he murmured : "We were classmates in Cebu Normal School elementary grades. I am Candido….."
Memory scraped away the wrinkles, the dirt and in-between years. We had played tubig-tubig and other games of childhood. Together, we built model airplanes and sailed toy boats. Vacations, we'd swim in nearby Talisay pools.
Today? Tiene cara de hambre.
"You have the face of hunger," the oprhan boy tells the Crucified in the film classic: Marcelino, Pan y Vino.
We barely managed snatches of conversation. Airline schedules are unyielding. Couldn't I have dropped, into his tin cup, more than what was hurriedly fished out of a shirt pocket? I fretted even as the immigration officer waved us on.
We're all invited to journey to Bethlehem. For some, like Imelda Marcos, the invitation comes, as the Guardian of London notes, while she “clicks a button for servants in a Manila penthouse cluttered with masterpieces by Picasso, Michelangelo, Gaugin, priceless antique statues of Buddha and gold, gold, gold.” Others, like my beggared-classmate, wearily limp to "the City of David" with empty tin cans. Billionaires here lodge in "gated enclaves" while many lack frugal livelihoods.
"There's no room in the inn."
Yet, "Christmas is the only time I know of when men and women, seem by one consent, to open their shut-up hearts freely," Charles Dickens wrote in 1843. Like the reengineered Ebenezer Scrooge, they "think of people below them, not as another race of creatures bound on other journeys, but as fellow passengers to the grave."
I've never seen my beggar-friend again. But he forms part of Christmases past images. As the years slip by, these mental snapshots remain. But revisiting them, one discovers that a bittersweet ( chiaroscurro? ) tone overlays the montage.
Images include kindnesses by friends one now rarely sees. I rushed out to talk with a pediatrician, glimpsed midway through an Advent mass. Dr. Mike Celdran lavished care on my now-grown kids. I wanted him to meet my lawyer-daughter and her doctor husband, visiting for Christmas. But he had left.
"That season comes wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated / The bird of dawning singeth all night long," one reads in "Hamlet". The OFWs too were singing carols like Tagalog version of Kadsadya Ning Takna-a at the SVD Fathers Verbiti conference room in Rome, Italy. It was Christmas Day. Did they sing the old Spanish carols like Nacio Nacio Pastores? I don't remember now.
Verbiti is tucked close to Hadrian's Wall. It was festooned with star lanterns and a belen. A couple of lechons were on the table.. But corrosive loneliness contorted the faces of many in that room, separated from kith and kin, in "this "hallowed and gracious time".
One glimpsed in the tears slipping past tightly-closed eyes, the economic diaspora's costs. Hidden behind those hefty foreign exchange remittances are: pain, separation, alienation, trauma even. Tiene cara de hambre.
Christmas, the Filipino SVD fathers told their expat flock, is "Emmanuel — God with us" in the dark night, even of loneliness and despair.
"There are no more unvisited places in our lives."
Illnesses in absent family is shattering for expatriates. In Jakarta, we trudged to the Crib in Gereja Theresia ( St Therese's Church ), behind Indonesia’s giant mall : Sarina. Half a world away, alone in a Los Angeles ICU room, an economic diaspora statistic — my younger brother — lay dying.
In January, Jesse phoned. Life is fragile, he said. We don't know when we will see each other again. Let's meet in Cebu with our then 86- year old mother. So, he flew in from LA. Our only sister from Toronto arrived. And the wife and I joined in from Bangkok. We had a laughter-filled week.
Our mother went July.
"Please. No heroic measures," our sister-in-law soberly cautioned the cardiac team that rushed in. And by Christmas, Jesse was gone too.
The Child of Bethlehem enables us to see beyond the grave. "Death is not the extinguishing of life," the Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore wrote. "It is putting out the lamp because dawn has come."
From our third floor flat in Bangkok, we'd watch this Thai lady slip into the deserted courtyard of Holy Redeemer Church. Draped in the Advent dawn's soft darkness, she'd pray before the picture of Our Lady of Perpetual Help -- until Misa de Gallo, introduced by Filipino workers, would start. Her silhouette brought Isaiah's lines to mind: "The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light," Isaiah writes "Kings shall (stream) to the brightness of thy rising."
That silhouette, like the image of a Muntinlupa prisoner, forms part of our Christmases past. Clad in sweat-stained detainee togs, the prisoner wouldn't budge. If delayed, I'd miss a dinner appointment. Seeing the blank look in my eyes, he murmured : "Don't you remember me? We were playmates in Cebu. My name is Policarpio…."
There is, we're told, a geography of the heart. Like the Magi, we travel its byways, not merely from place to place, but from grace to grace. It is a search for what endures amid the transient. Without fail, we find it in those with cara de hambre.
"And they found the Child with Mary his mother," the story goes. Venite adoremus. #### ( E-mail : juan_mercado@pacific.net.ph )
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Credibility -- hottest game in town
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WE just finished our three to four week visit to the homeland which we undertake quarterly to check on clients. We are feeling refreshed as usual after have our fill of broiled and sour soup "sinigang" of fresh fish. At fantastically reasonable cost.
Our preference for sashimi will be dented though after hearing from friends that unlike the Japanese who were born and reared on raw fish, Filipinos should go slow on our intake of such food. We were told of people acquiring, even getting killed by, serious stomach disorders due to this food addiction. Too bad. Japanese food in general is lighter on the pocket book in Manila compared to the US. Healthier too because of omega oil.
But there's nothing to compare with being immersed once more in old friends and kins. It sort of even up things. It lessens the pain even of spending US dollars which go down in value faster than the peso these days in Manila.
However, the "feeling good" is overwhelmed by the "feeling bad" when one delves into the political situation.
When one focuses on the principal preoccupation of Filipinos -- our main industry -- politics, you had better adopt a protective attitude of not believing everything you see or hear. Don't be taken in by all the drama that go around, what with national elections coming up in a year or two.
Credibility quotient is the hottest game in town. One never knows what to believe. With Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, it's a foregone conclusion. Her believability is down in the dumps. But surprise, surprise. Joseph Estrada has caught the bug. The guessing game now is -- is Erap GMA? Never is GMA Erap?
"Bumigay rin" (he yielded) is a common observation. The administration's unlimited resources proved too much. The impression now is that GMA and Erap and Joe de Venecia is the latest monolith of power. No don't believe what you hear about the tiff between GMA and JDV's factions. Our sources are united on this one. The quarrel is fake and these fakeries will multiply as the next election cauldron starts to boil over.
In Manila, the rule to follow is always to follow the money trail. The monolithic power combine owns and controls the money printing press. It can buy anything. It's no exaggeration to say they have the entire country all wrapped up.
We hope we can say truthfully the money influence, however, stops at the gates of the military camps. Believe it or not, it's inside these camps where the light of hope for the country still glows strongly. The young idealistic military officers remain our only hope for national redemption. Those GMA generals had better beware.
The negative in all this, however, is that as this trend continues, the chances grow that only a bloodbath may remain the only way out for the Philippines to get out of the present political mess. The bright eager eyes of those radicals that sparkle as we listen to them give us hope.
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It’s all about the children
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THE December holidays have just begun and the celebrations took off with ABS-CBN Foundation's Gala at Century Plaza Hotel in Century City to mark Bantay- Bata's 10th anniversary. Arriving early in my baro't saya at the reception hall of the Los Angeles Ballroom, I relished partaking of the native chocolate and pan de sal at Goldilocks booth. Some followed the dress code which was appropriately Filipiniana but nevertheless guests came in their formal best.
The spirit behind the grand fundraiser reception dinner- program was the purple-gowned Regina Lopez who founded the Foundation, the giant media network's philantropic arm. She led an out-of-the ordinary invocation by asking everyone to sit still in a moment of meditation.
Brother Raffy (who oversees TFC's global operations) welcomed and thanked some 400 attendees for supporting the foundation's cause which has benefited the decade-old rehabilitation, educational, and nutritional programs of indigent children in the homeland.
Prominent entertainers who performed and presented awards to the event's sponsors and leadership honorees which included Guiding Star Realty, the Law Offices of Michael J. Gurfinkel, the Asian Journal Publications, were Apl of the Black Eyed Peas, Becca Godinez and Lea Salonga who wore a black lace and red satin gown reminiscent of her wedding gown which I presume must've been by Monique Lhuillier. Lea performed two Christmas-themed songs and was persuaded (by popular demand) to do an encore. For Ms. Salonga fans - here's more. After playing Fantine for seven months in Les Miserables (her second stint in the Broadway musicale after critically- acclaimed performances as Eponine in 1993), Lea left the cast on October 21. No less than President Gloria Arroyo watched it and was "entranced by her performance" during a recent visit to New York. Lea will next be playing Cinderella, in a Rodger's and Hammerstein's musical to be staged in Manila and other cities in Asia next year.
Now getting back to the Century City Gala, UCLA 's Tinig chorale group and the SIPA Children's Choir and the Rondalla Club of LA also provided the musicality to the evening.
Now to Express readers who are not familiar with Simbang Gabi. Literally translated, it means worship at night, the most enduring of Filipino traditions when Catholic churches in the Homeland, open their doors before the break of dawn to welcome the faithful to simbang gabi mass. The masses begin on December 16 at 4:00 o'clock in the morning, culminating with the Misa de Gallo on December 24, to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. In olden times, the pre-dawn mass is announced when the church bells ring. A rondalla band plays Christmas music in rural areas an hour before Simbang Gabi begins. In recent times, colorful lights and lanterns known as the parol are hung in windows and fill the streets. Songs befitting the season are heard whether played or sung everywhere to bring families, neighbors and friends together to usher in Christmas.
Noche Buena on Christmas eve is when feasts with delicacies like bibingka, puto bungbong, salabat or native chocolate and queso de bola are laden on the tables during the Media Noche. Simbang Gabi is significant in many ways as it is a time when our faith is intensified and family ties are strengthened as there is an air of spirituality ... as we prepare for the advent of our Lord and hope for peace here in America, in the Philippines and throughout the world.
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