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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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ON the feast day of the Black Nazarene, the aerial
view from a top a Quiapo building showed a humongous
phalanx of devotees risking life and limbs just to get close to the miraculous statue of the suffering Jesus Christ. It was not a peaceful procession. It was chaos.
Two people died in the stampede-like procession,
and more than 40 were injured this year. Two million
people attended the procession and many more miniature
processions occurred at the same time in narrow streets
around the area.
It is nothing new. The tradition dates back to the
18th century, when the original statue of the Black Nazarene was transferred from the Recollletos convent in Intramuros, Manila to the Quiapo Basilica. It never wanes.
In fact, it gets bigger every year.
There are two kinds of Black Nazarene devotees: Those who attend to give thanks for granted miracles, and
those who attend to supplicate. Those who supplicate are larger in number, obviously.
Who could blame them?
They have been asking for miracles from the Arroyo
government for so long now, and apparently, Gloria
has not been in a responsive mood since she sat in the
Palace. These supplicants want a better life and they are tired of pitting their hopes on indifferent government officials–they are better off asking a wooding carving of the almighty Lord under chastisement.
In the process of asking the Black Nazarene for
grace and miracles, these devotees undergo tremendous
risks: death, serious injury, and molestation. Nevertheless, they could care less. For them it is the surest way to a prosperous and healthy life.
“Put your faith in the Lord carved in wood than in a
government run by hoods”.
There is sweet irony in all these fanatical devotion
to the Quiapo icon.
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H-1B Status While Adjustment Is Pending
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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)
MANY of our readers have asked if it is necessary to
maintain one’s H-1B status if he/ she has a pending adjustment of status application.
A pending adjustment application entitles the applicant
to file for interim benefits such as employment and travel.
Why should one go to the expense of extending his/her H-1B status if the above H-1B benefits are already available to the adjustment applicant?
There are substantial benefits to maintaining an H-1B status. The pending adjustment application authorizes
the applicant to remain in the U.S. and work, but if he/ she is laid off or terminated, the adjustment application may be denied and he/she may be forced to leave the country. Upon denial, he/she may not be able to file an H-1B extension or change of status because he/she would have already incurred a long period of unlawful presence.
On the other hand, if he/she is in valid H-1B status,
it is possible to file a new petition before a significant gap of employment occurs.
There is an exception to the rule that termination of
employment will invalidate the application. Under the portability rule, if an adjustment of status application has been pending for more than 180 days, the employee may move to another employer and work
in the same or similar occupational classification
But what happens if the adjustment application is denied for other reasons such as failure to submit a
required document?
Upon denial, the applicant will be considered as being unlawfully present in the U.S. from thetime the H-1B expired.
As an example, if a physical therapist, occupational therapist or medical technologist files an adjustment application without a visa screen certificate, the USCIS will accept the application and may issue a work and travel permit. But the applicant will receive an RFE (Request for Evidence) requiring him/her to submit the visa screen certificate within a certain period of time.
Visa screen certificates are not easy to get. The applicant must pass a verbal and written English test and submit a validation of all his/her licenses and registrations. Most of the time, the process
takes over six months.
If the visa screen certificate is not submitted on time, the application will be denied and the applicant will then be considered in unlawful status from the expiration date of his/her H-1B.
The adjustment application may be resubmitted upon obtaining the visa screen certificate but it will be denied if he/she has been in unlawful status for six months or more. He/She may have to depart the U.S. but will be subject to the 3 year/ 10 year bar.
To avoid exposure to the above risks, it is advisable to maintain one’s H-1B even if an adjustment of status application is pending.
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THE recent public dispute between the Philippine Daily Inquirer and the Manila Bulletin, on one hand, and the Philippine Star, on the other, has shown that the newspaper business in the Philippines is making a killing.
In its Dec. 22, 2007 front page story, the Philippine Star said, “On a day that The Philippine STAR’s issue was more than 50 pages thicker than theirs, the Philippine Daily Inquirer took a dig at The STAR yesterday over a recent ruling of the Advertising Board of the Philippines (Adboard) concerning one of The STAR’s advertisements.”
It added, “The STAR reported that it had continued to be the No. 1 choice of advertisers for 2007, generating P2.62 billion in display advertising revenues from January to November 2007. Inquirer had P2.3 billion while Manila Bulletin grossed P1.20 billion.”
WHERE IS THE BEEF?
By publicly admitting that the Star is making the most billions in the business -- repeat billions, why didn’t it send its own sports reporter to cover the recent AIBA World Boxing Championship in Chicago, Illinois? Why did the Star depend on the news story fed into it by the sports writer from their competition – the Philippine Daily Inquirer? Where do the Star and other newspapers, who used the Inquirer’s stories, take their advertising revenues if they are slow in subsidizing the overseas trips of their reporters?
When the Star and other Metro Manila dailies surreptitiously used the stories filed by the Philippine Daily Inquirer sports writer, these newspapers betrayed the trust of the readers and committed plagiarism when they did not use the Inquirer reporter’s byline in their newspapers.
If the Philippine Daily Inquirer allowed its own staff writer to send his stories to the competitions, the Inquirer should also be similarly blamed for tolerating the journalistic ethics code violation by its own staff member.
WRONG THING TO DO
As I told the Inquirer sports writer when he was in Chicago covering the event, he should not have acceded to the request by “all sports editors in Metro Manila” to fed them his stories because it was a wrong thing to do. Not only was it a violation of “free enterprise,” it was also a violation of the Journalism’s code of ethics, I told him.
If the Inquirer reporter ignored the sports editors’ request, it was understandable because being out scooped by the competition comes with the territory.
Blame should rest on the publishers, who are penny pinching when it comes to overseas coverage. But the
other sports editors had another option to take: They can ask the wire service agencies, like the Associated Press and Reuters, serving them to get a more detailed coverage of events involving Philippine boxers.
I remember when I was an entertainment reporter in the pre-martial law Philippine Daily and Pilipino Star, I saw several wire service agencies reporters and photographers covering a beauty contest for heavier set called “Dabiana.” The wire services reporters told me newspapers from London, England requested them to cover it not really for “cheese cake” value but for “human interest.”
LET WIRE REPORTERS WORK
That’s why I don’t see any reason why Philippine sports editors cannot ask Manila-based wire service agencies to do a more detailed and more extensive coverage of the AIBA boxing event in Chicago for their newspapers. Or they can request and pay Chicago area sports writers to cover the sports event for their papers by drawing from their billions in advertising revenues expenses for the overseas transportation, hotel accommodation and other incidental expenses they would have incurred if they sent away their own sports writer.
Putting a dateline in a newspaper when a reporter is not on the scene of the event is dishonesty to the readers – a betrayal of public trust and a plagiarism.
This was one of the journalism ethics violations committed by former New York Times reporter Jason Blair, who was fired for writing stories for the Times that “pilfered quotes from Associated Press copy, details from small newspapers, and datelines he didn't deserve.” As a result, it forced the resignations of Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd, the top two editors at the New York Times.
PRIOR ARRANGEMENT
Although, it would be an embarrassment and an admission of being second-fiddle, the sports editors, who used the Inquirer’s stories should have used the byline of the Inquirer reporter and labeled him as “Inquirer Staff Writer.” But for this to happen, these sports editors need to get the permission of their publishers. This kind of arrangement is done with prior agreement by major U.S. mainstream national newspapers with regional newspapers that had the imprimatur of the publishers of those newspapers on a case-by-case basis.
Here’s hoping that the National Press Club of the Philippines, the Manila Overseas Press Club and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines and other “journalists police” would investigate this to guard against the repetition of this journalist ethics violation scandal.
The Philippine government can help stop this journalism ethics violation by keeping an arms-length distance from the sports writers covering sports events to preserve the adversarial relationship.
The Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) can do this by hiring an out-of-job sports writer as press relations officer, who can write any sports event and distribute the stories “to all sports editors” without running into conflict-of-interest issues.
PR MAN AND OMBUDSMEN WANTED
The Philippine Congress can help by giving additional funding to the job of a press relations officer of the PSC. Congress must activate its oversight committee to make sure the press relations officer is doing his jobper job description.
And the major newspapers in the Philippines, which are earning top advertising money in the business, should
put their moneys where their mouth is: Hire respected former journalists as “Ombudsmen” or “Public Editors” who act on complaints of readers against abuses by their own newspaper reporters, who violate journalist’s code of ethics
(lariosa_jos@ sbcglobal.net)
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Reversing Profligacy’s Legacy
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ARE we locking stable doors long after the horses bolt? That’s how people, numbed by unrelenting deforestation, reacted to the news report that, after 15 years of bickering, the UN adopted a “Non-Legally Binding Instrument on All Types of Forests.”
Politicians here smudge significant reports. Pardoned plunderer Joseph Estrada “vowed to expose grafters” in a book his ghost writers haven’t yet stitched. that bagged the evening news lead, ahead of police blotter sleaze. This was a story of 183 nations agreeing to curb a suicidal five percent per decade deforestation rate. It landed in an inside page below the fold.
The General Assembly approved the new instrument on December 17. It saw light here 22 days later. That came in a Foreign Office statement on provisions UN Permanent Representative Hilario Davide cobbled into the document.
Yet, our nerves are still raw from deaths of kith and kin in floods cascading from denuded mountains. Corpses in Quezon, Aurora, Leyte, Surigao underscore what dull statistics tell : In 1575, forests blanketed 27.5 million hectares. This had been razed to less than a fifth in 2001.
That sliver continues to dwindle Ask Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. His firm, San Jose Timber Corporation, logs within 97,770 hectares, straddling protected zones, of the country’s last old-growth forest in Samar.
In the 1950s the Philippines pranced as a “prima donna” of Asian timber trade. “In it’s virgin state, Philippine forests were among the most commercially viable in the world, with outstanding yields of high-quality easily- accessible timber,” notes “Asia-Pacific Forestry: Towards 2010.”
But concessions were recklessly parceled out in the ‘60s and ‘70s. They surged to blanket more than a third of the country’s land area. Loggers cut as if there was no tomorrow. Log exports crested, in the late 60s, at 10 million metric tons yearly – and nosedived. Tomorrow has come.
Now, we buy wood from Asean countries, plus Australia and New Zealand – which invested in tree plantations, in the 1970s. Timber imports now cost the country roughly 10 times what it scrapes to export. Consumption burned wealth generated from forests. Only a pittance went for processing or plantations..
Thus, yesterday’s timber “prima donna” is today’s wood-pauper. The country also become a case study in reverse :-- how not to handle God-given resources.
“The Philippines was effectively the first Asia-Pacific country, in the post World War II era, to extensively liquidate it’s forest wealth,” the Food and Agriculture Organization noted. “The experience of the Philippines…offers a poignant lesson” for still-forested countries from Cambodia to Vanuatu.. The region lost, over the last 50 years, half it’s forests.
In Asia, gross deforestation exceeds three to four millions hectares annually, .forester C. Chandrasekharan estimated before his 2007 death. Over the last 50 years, the region lost half it’s forests,..”This depletion is historically unprecedented,” he added. “It is unsustainable. Worse, it triggered degradation whose long-term damage can be ten times worse than deforestation. If unchecked, policies and programs will be like chasing the wind.”
Indeed, there’s "more to this instrument than just protecting trees," UN General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim said. It reinforce local people’s stake in forest by seeking to ensure a fairer share of its benefits.
That should resonate here. Much of poverty festers in communities, clustered in or around forests, or on ecologically-brittle uplands. Initiatives can help the poor break the grip of elites who’ve creamed benefits from forests. Malnutrition and disease take a savage toll. But death through shriveling away is not the stuff of headlines.
World Bank earlier stressed this need for strengthening of national forest governance” in its new report : "At Loggerheads? Agricultural Expansion, Poverty Reduction and Environment in the Tropical Forests."
Dense tropical forests are often cleared to create pastures worth as little as $300 a hectare, it notes. These unleash large amounts of CO2. Yet, “forests may be worth five times more if left standing.” They provide vital carbon “sinks.” Developing countries should tap this value by improved policies and programs in three forest types :
( a ) “Frontiers and disputed lands”. Guaranteeing forest rights is a key to mitigate deforestation, defuse conflicts, and increase incomes;
( b ) “Lands beyond the agricultural frontier”: As in Borneo, New Guinea and Sulawesi, quick action to head off the social and environmental impacts of future agricultural expansion is the main challenge.
( c ) “Mosaic lands - Here, forests and agriculture coexist.. The report suggests drawing on the Global Environmental Fund for programs that help farmers to maintain their forests and shift to agroforestry systems, which offer carbon and biodiversity benefits.
"Global carbon finance can be a powerful incentive to stop deforestation," says François Bourguignon, the bank’s chief economist.
Is that beyond a Senator Jinggoy Estrada? Do his horizons go beyond sour-graping Manila Film Festival protocol?
The country must reverse a legacy of profligacy – or face disaster sooner rather than later.. . “Too little, too late is history’s universal epitaph for regimes which lost their mandates to demands of landless, jobless, disenfranchised and desperate men and women.”
(E-mail: juanlmercado@gmail.com )
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THURSDAY last week, the price of oil hit the $100 per barrel. The shocker happened after the 3-year low inventory was broken three times. Economic viability studies were being made at the $30 per barrel level for some time. Hence the sudden upthrust landed speculations in a strange area.
In their minds, observers of the world energy situation must have exclaimed, "At last, the dam finally broke." For sometime, energy players have been casting worrisome eyes on the huge appetites of China (population l.2 billion) and India (800 million) whose consumption of oil is hitting 20 percent of total supply. The economies of the two Asian countries have been on a tear for the last few years.
Add this troublesome energy situation to the political instability that obtains in the oil regions of the Middle East and Africa and indeed, the world economy is threatened. It is observed that the threat of recession in the developed regions in US and Europe might be an alleviating factor. For underdeveloped countries like the Philippines, this may not be the whole truth at all. It could be an exacerbating factor. Because of the poverty situation, it very likely translates to the masses counting with one and a half full meals day instead of half a meal a day.
At the prospect of $100 per barrel oil, the dreamy eyed, no, make that dazed eyes, spokesmen of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's make-believe government like Cerge Remonde are prettifying their economic canvass by saying the strong value of the peso is the cure-all to keep the national economy healthy. The US economy is slowing down. That's good. It would consume less oil. The Philippines, dependent on such markets to sell our exports, to be able to buy essential imports such as nitrogen for our fertilizer -- what happens to our agriculture. That's good?
We hardly produce fuel oil. What do we use to transport our farm produce, not only to feed our people? Let's skip the next questions. When there is widespread hunger, what do we throw to the raging masses. Mr Remonde? Maybe that's good.
As of now, a currency exchange rate increase of 20% is in the works. And Manila is import dependent. How many of our factories will still be running? How do we calm down the rioting millions of fuming hungry jobless?
Feed them more Remondes.
If we can still locate them. They and government bureaucrats will have probably vanished from the scene to seek safety from retribution.
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