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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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SHORTER NATURALIZATION WAIT
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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 waiting time to become a naturalized U.S. citizen is projected to shorten by the end of September 2008.
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on August 11, 2008 that it anticipates to reduce the processing period for naturalization cases from the previous average processing time of 16 to 18 months to an average of 10 to12 months nationally.
It expects to continually reduce it further to five months by next year.
This streamlining is in response to the effort to ease the backlogs in the naturalization applications which resulted from the surge of applications prior to the increase in naturalization fees in July last year.
Last fiscal year, the USCIS received 1.4 million naturalization applications. This was nearly double the previous year’s 730,000 applications which was the normal annual volume of applications.
According to the Department of Homeland Security report, the leading countries with the largest number of naturalizations were Mexico (122,258), India (46,871), Philippines (38,830), China (33,134) and Vietnam (27,921). The highest concentration of these applicants resided in California (181,684), New York (73,676) and Florida (54,563).
Because of the uneven distribution of naturalization applicants across the country, the processing times may vary among USCIS field offices.
On the average, the shortest processing time of five months is projected for the following USCIS field offices: Agana, Guam; Anchorage, Alaska; Mount Laurel, New Jersey; Detroit, Michigan; Harlingen, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Reno, Nevada; Sacramento, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; San Antonio, Texas; San Diego, California; Spokane, Washington; West Palm Beach, Florida; Yakima, Washington; Honolulu, Hawaii and Chicago, Illinois.
The longest processing times are projected for Charlotte, North Carolina - 14.9 months; New Orleans, Louisiana - 14.5 months; Hartford, Connecticut -14.3 months; and Charleston, South Carolina -14.1 months.
The average processing time for New York applicants will be 10 months. For Orlando, Florida, it will be 9.5 months. Naturalization applicants in Newark, New Jersey will wait for an average of 7.4 months. Those in San Francisco, California will wait for five months while those based in Los Angeles, California will wait for 12.5 months.
The USCIS expects to complete processing of more than one million naturalization applications by the end of the fiscal year.
Clearly, a lot of residents have recognized the benefits of U.S. citizenship in light of the upcoming presidential elections and out of a sense of civic duty to participate in the democratic process. The influx of naturalization applications has been met by the USCIS with efforts to streamline and speed up the process by increased hiring, expanded work hours and review and reallocation of resources among the local offices in order to achieve its ultimate goal of reducing the naturalization processing time to five months in the coming fiscal year.
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CHICAGO, Illinois (JGLi) – In 1979, Richard J. Gordon was a private law practitioner in Manila, Philippines. It was also about the same time that the Great Blizzard hit Chicago that would cost the position of Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic.
Because I was covering then the Philippine movie industry, I remember, the young Mr. Gordon was lawyering for imported film distributors in the Philippines while tussling with then San Juan, Metro Manila Mayor Joseph E. Estrada, chairman of the Movie Workers Welfare Fund (Mowelfund), who was trying hard to keep the Filipino movies from being eased out of the box office by imported Hollywood blockbuster movies.
I’m sure that Mr. Gordon was not aware that when the people of Chicago suffered unimaginable hardship from that 20-inch snow storm that buried the city, Chicagoans vented their wrath on Bilandic for the city’s slow response in keeping their lives bearable. Bilandic lost in the primary election to Jane Byrne, a disgruntled former member of his Cabinet, and Chicagoans elected Byrne as the first woman mayor of Chicago.
HE WAS SORELY MISSED
That’s why I was very impressed when Mr. Gordon did not show up at the recent 8th All Ateneo Alumni convention in Chicago because he must have realized that because he is a volunteer chairman of the Philippine Red Cross, he could not abandon the victims of supertyphoon Frank (international code name: Fensheng) who need his attention more than his Ateneo colleagues in Chicago.
Mr. Gordon did not want to suffer the fate of Mayor Bilandic. He did not want to jeopardize his position in the Philippine Red Cross that could also affect his re-election chances in the Senate or the snowballing movement for him to run for president in 2010.
My friend, Ms. Maritess (Bing Branigin), a community journalist and community leader in the Washington, D.C. area, told me that Mr. Gordon’s luggage was sent together with the entourage of President Arroyo who paid a call at President Bush in the White House last June. She picked up the luggage but Mr. Gordon, who was asked by Mrs. Arroyo to join the trip, decided to stay behind in the Philippines.
TEARS WON’T DRY UP
Mr. Gordon, a pre-law graduate at the Ateneo de Manila University, whose mascot is the Eagle, decided to proceed to Iloilo province, one of the hardest hit provinces by Frank. He was so distraught by the sight of the hardship suffered by the homeless typhoon victims he could not hold back his tears.
The four-day event of the gathering of the Eagles in Chicago would have been more impressive if he made it. But his fellow co-graduates believed that Mr. Gordon should not have done it any other way.
They believe that Mr. Gordon can compensate for his absence this year’s prequel to the 150th sesquicentennial celebration of the foundation day of Ateneo de Manila University next year in the mother of all Ateneo’s anniversaries when it is held in the Philippines.
In fact the two other speakers – Messrs. Manny V. Pangilinan and Antonio Meloto – more than made up for Mr. Gordon’s absence.
A holder of the degree of A.B. History and Government at the Ateneo de Manila University, Mr. Pangilinan graduated cum laude from the Ateneo de Manila University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. Mr. Meloto is also a graduate of the same university also with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics.
STRUGGLE CONTINUES
While Mr. Pangilinan, chairman of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company, one of the giant private companies in the Philippines, challenged Filipino businessmen to observe “ethics and morality” in conducting their businesses to attract foreign investors as their partners, Mr. Meloto, who struggled to make it to the convention as he lost his luggage, appealed to his co-graduates in America, who “have slaved long hours, endured the worst bosses on the planet and survived the coldest winters in America” but “succeeded exceedingly well,” to visit the Philippines’ “abandoned and forgotten, to help us seek the least and the lost.”
Mr. Meloto, the prime-mover of Gawad Kalinga (to give care), which is building holistic and sustainable communities for a slum-free, squatter-free and homeless-free Philippines, invited his colleagues to “visit our Gawad Kalinga communities and discover what is good and true in the Filipino because every village is built with nobility and greatness of the spirit our people that inspire even foreigners to help.”
The low-key Dr. Rodrigo Farrales, president of AteneansUSA and convention chairperson, and his brother, Jesse, have considered the turnout of the convention participants a success not only because of the number of participants but also the quality of the guest speakers.
ACT OF GOD
Even the absence of another guest speaker, Sen. Richard J. Gordon, was felt the most because it took an act of God for him to miss the event that gave the face to the Messianic invocation that “whatever good thing you do to the least of my people you also do unto Me.”
My only misgivings is that at the rate the Philippines is being visited by calamities such as typhoons and earthquakes, I doubt, if Mr. Gordon would have a chance to leave his beloved Philippines even if he is honored abroad.
But then, nobody can do it both ways.(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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“All deep things are song,” Thomas Carlyle once wrote. Thus, a Philippine Star article says 94-year old Josefino Cenizal is being considered for a “National Artist” award. It adds: He composed the country’s most loved carol . Did he?
“At age 23, in 1937, Cenizal started arranging and composing music for movies,” the article notes. “His music can be categorized into two periods: 1937 to the 1960s and “mod-60s to the present”.
“Ang Pasko Ay Sumapit… the Christmas carol he composed ( lyrics by Levi Celerio ) is more known than him,” the column adds. During this earlier period, “he wrote the music for “Ang Pasko…which Celerio converted into a Christmas song.”
Proclamation No. 1001 of April 1972 anchors “National Artist” titles. These go to Filipinos who contribute significantly “to development of Philippine arts” in nine fields: music, dance, theater, visual arts, literature, film, broadcast arts, fashion design and architecture. There’s a “Catch 22” category: “Allied Arts.”
The Cultural Center administers the awards. The first award was posthumously conferred on painter Fernando Amorsolo. Other awardees include: Sculptor Napoleon Abueva; theater director Lamberto Avellana ; authors Nick Joaquin and F. Sionil Jose; and film director Lino Brocka.
The problem is: the late Vicente Rubi composed that carol, writes Cebu Normal University museum curator Romola O. Savellon. “Are we going to take this sitting down?”
This is a country that boasts of the longest celebration of Christmas, Jullie Yap Daza wrote in a 1978 Times Journal column. “ (Yet ) no effort has been made to attribute the beloved carol ‘Ang Pasko Ay Sumapit” ( translation of Kasadya Ning Takna-a ) to it’s composer: Vicente D. Rubi of Cebu..”
Rubi composed the music for a Cebuano drama festival called Pili Kanipa-an,”, Alex Dacanay wrote in Panorama Magazine ( 13 December 1987 ) “It always fell on December and therefore invariably had a Christmas theme.”
Rubi sought out Mariano Vestil, who lived then in Basak Cebu, to do the lyrics. Both produced “Ka Sadya Ning Takna-a” . The piece won hands down. “Filipinos felt in the music a sense of home.” First sang in Cebu in 1933, the carol spread to other areas.
Today, in Bohol, Negros Oriental, Southern Leyte, Northern Mindanao, Cebu and elsewhere, carolers still sing the same infectious beat that Rubi and Vestil blended 75 years ago. It’s an exuberant carol. Listeners are drawn in with the singers. “Bualahan ang tagbalay / nga gi awitan.” (“Blessed are the homes where carols are sang”).
“For P150, He Wrote Ang Pasko Ay Sumapit”, Dacanay titled his Panorama article. “The most that Rubi ever received for his works was P150 for each of the five daygons ( Visayan for carol ), recorded in 1976, for Vicor.”
”At today’s post Fernando Poe Jr candidacy’s exchange rate, that’s $2.68 cents,” said the Manila Standard article: “Advent Wreaths and Hijacked Carols” ( December 6, 1995 ). This is raw exploitation. Today’s jargon calls that ‘Intellectual Property Rights’ theft.”.
“( Doesn’t that ) make a mockery of the festival that this carol sings of? Bagong tuig, bagong kinabuhi, the Cebuano original and it’s Tagalog adaptation proclaim. It echoes the Advent cry of Isaiah: ‘Break the fetters of injustice…and break every yoke./ Then, will your light break forth as the morning’…”
Ms Daza wrote that Rubi and Vestil never got what were due them in royalties., Both were no longer young then. “Nong Inting” was an impoverished widower. On the last of his repeated trips to the record company, he was told: payment had been given to another person.
Until he was confined in a hospital charity ward, Rubi would shuffle to his door to teach startled carolers, sometimes tin-cap tambourine banging kids, how to sing his daygon.
Lyrcist Mariano Vestil died 24 years after Rubi. The Inquirer column ( Dec. 7, 2004 ) on his death was titled “A Bitter Sweet Carol,”. It read:
“Few noticed the songwriters obituary, stashed below the fold of a newspaper’s inside page a few days back. But this note on an obscure lyricist’s passing…evokes images of Christmases past…
“Twenty years after Rubi’s death, as his obituary notes, the lyricist Vestil went to his grave, also bereft of benefits and recognition – although their carol continues to resound, albeit in forms that Rubi and Vestil never sought…
“But those who crassly exploited the talented daygon musician and lyricist have kindred spirits here: in the cartel that flogged an onerous levy on coconut farmers; in loggers who triggered those flash floods or generals who fiddled with soldiers’ skimpy retirement benefits. These are “the Napoleons of crime,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle muses,
“Christmas unique grace is that both the carol writer and the carol thief can say with the shepherds and kings: ‘Let us go to Bethlehem and see what the Lord has made known to us, the Inquirer column said.
Belated tribute of sorts came in 1981. Cebu Province and Cebu Arts Foundation adopted a citation for their :”priceless contribution to the enrichment of Cebu culture, specifically in the field of music, through ( the ) deathless daygon: Kasayda Ning Taknaa.”
Dacanay reports that some of Rubi’s unpublished songs are kept in a special box by one of his daughters: Mrs Ludvina Rubi-Navarro. “Some day, perhaps, ( they’ll be published ) to regale an audience more deserving of them.”
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For the longest time its been my desire to visit Palawan. I finally did on this annual trip to the Homeland. In spite of foreboding advisory not to, I went ahead and visited the locale of two (the St. Paul Underground River and Tubbataha Reef) of the world's 7 wonders of nature found in the southern part of the Philippine archipelago.
Strange that the map's location of this province with its 1,768 islands and islets is between the Visayas and Mindanao and yet, it is officially listed as region 4-B (Southern Luzon). In the three nights and four days that I stayed there, I found it to be -- a many-splendored paraiso. Crossing over through Honda Bay on a motorized boat, the exhilerating experience of viewing tropical fish and corals through snorkling on the shores of Snake Island, quickly turned to apprehension when sailing back through rough waters toward the Puerto Princesa mainland.
Early on the second day, with other balikbayans, trekked the bumpy roads toward the Underground River. Wearing helmets and lifesavers, the six of us with our navigator-guide sailed underneath the dark cavernous caves which stretches for over 8 kilometers. The boat's lamps unravelled limestone formations (like the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family). Hanging from above were bats (estimated cave residents 70,000) and birds flying up and about. Unseen were the sea serpents swimming underneath us. Getting back we went through the wooded habitat of monkeys and lizards near the seashore.
On the third day, it was a tour of the Crocodile and Nature Park, showcase of rara aves and the finale, a rainy visit to the Iwahig Penal Farm, the Philippines's unique prison without walls. We got to taste empanada baked by a brown-shirted inmate. Iwahig inmates are classified into three categories and wear t-shirts, according to their sentences. Maximum:orange; medium: blue and minimum: brown. The ones sentenced to a minimum, are allowed to eke a living through livelihood projects. To interview or talk to them, permission has to be granted by proper authorities.
There are many more natural wonders to experience in Palawan such as the fireflies lighting up the mangrove forest and an army of bats flying out of their caves in search of food. But I was struck by the firetrees lining both sides of the national highway. What a sight it must be during the flowering season.
Translated Puerto Princesa means Princess of Ports and historical records show that the harbor city was so-named by the grieving Queen of Spain, Isabella II (who reigned in 1864) in memory of her daughter, Princess Eulalia, who had met an untimely death. The city has been administered by Mayor Edward Hagedorn for 13 years and he has implemented a tree-planting program yearly which keeps Puerto Princesa majestically green as ever.
Quite fittingly, the Miss Earth Pageant takes centerstage in Puerto. No less than former President Estrada was a special guest of Mayor Hagedorn, an Erap look-alike, when the beauty queens visited the Palawan capital last month.
Would be travelers to Puerto Princesa, can find premier accommodations at the Legend Palawan. The service is excellent. Special thanks to the management staff and personnel for the hospitality: Patrick, Rowena, Richard, Dorie, Joanne and Pancho.
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