FILVETS IN THE CROSSHAIRS

WASHINGTON DC – The Filipino WW II veterans’ long struggle to rescind the Rescission Act of 1946 faces a major bar in this presidential election year. “The Filipino veterans are unfortunately caught in the crosshairs of the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner mindset of the Republicans,” a veteran Capitol Hill lobbyist observed.

It's a totally different political climate from last year when the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill - which seeks to restore the pension rights of the surviving Filipino WW II veterans (currently 6,000 in the US and 12,000 in the Philippines) that were rescinded when the US Congress passed the Rescission Act on October 18, 1946 - made unprecedented gains.

For the first time ever, the Veterans Affairs committees of both the US Senate and the US House conducted hearings and passed their separate versions, getting them set for a full vote in the floors of both Houses of Congress. Once they pass both Houses, a conference committee will then be formed to reconcile versions of the bill (Senate bill S. 1315 and House bill HR 760) and the emerging compromise will then be set for a vote. Once passed, the bill will then go the White House for the signature of the US President.

On November 7 and again on December 12 last year, Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii) sought unanimous consent from his senate colleagues for his bill to go straight to a floor vote without fear of cloture (a filibuster). On both occasions, Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) rebuffed his request.

It wasn’t just Craig’s objection that caused the bill to fail but the reason for his objection is the “crosshairs” problem of the bill this year. In his objection, Sen. Craig said: "First of all, they do not live in this country, they are not US citizens. They are taking money away from our veterans. That is the 'Robin Hood in reverse' effect. At least Robin Hood, when he took money, left it in Nottingham. He spread it out amongst his own. Here we are taking money from our own and sending it all the way to the Philippines."

Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), the ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said providing pension benefits to Filipino veterans is “the wrong priority at the wrong time” because the U.S. is now at war and the US government should focus on the needs of U.S. citizens and those injured in battle.” This bill is also being used as a vehicle for a provision that would take money away from helping veterans of war -- of the war on terror – and instead sending the money overseas," Burr said.

Sen. Burr this past week introduced a bill that deletes pension benefits for Filipinos veterans in the Philippines and instead boosts funds for grants to wounded U.S. veterans, providing retroactive payments between $25,000 and $100,000 to all disabled veterans who were injured since 2001 -- and not just in a war zone.

Sen. Burr is confident of winning a debate in the Senate Veterans Committee between Akaka’s bill which would provide veterans pension to Filipino WW II vets including 12,000 Philippine citizens living in the Philippines and his bill which would provide benefits to US citizens who are veterans of the current war on terror.

The Filner Equity bill that passed the House Veterans Committee, chaired by Rep. Bob Filner (D-California), proposed a $90-M annual package that would provide $900 a month to US based Filvets and $500 a month pension toPhilippine based veterans. The Akaka Equity Bill that passed the US Senate Veterans Committee proposed a $50-M package that would provide $900 a month pension to the 6,000 Filvets in the US and $300 a month pension to Filipino veterans in the Philippines.

Sen. Craig and Sen. Burr previously proposed a $20-M package that would provide $900 a month to US based veterans and $100 a month pension to each Philippine veteran and $100 a month to the veteran’s spouse. But Craig and Burr withdrew their compromise offer on December 13, 2007 because of opposition from US veterans groups like the American Legion.

Seeking a congressional compromise that would ensure passage of the bill has been complicated, according to one congressional staffer, by the mixed messages coming from the Filipino American community. Veterans’ groups like the American Coalition for the Filipino Veteran (ACFV) favor working on a bill that can actually get through Congress while veterans support groups like the National Alliance for Filipino Veterans Equity (NAFVE) “oppose any efforts to weaken the (Filner) bill”.

As of a week ago, Filner’s equity bill had only110 sponsors in the House, 96 Democrats and 14 Republicans led by former lead sponsor Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA). This week, the number was reduced by 2, with the death of long-time supporter Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) and the decision by West Virginia Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) to have her name removed from the list of sponsors.

The Akaka bill has only 16 sponsors, 15 Democrats and 1 Republican, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska). Akaka is confident that he can get all the Democratic senators to support his bill.

The House is waiting for the Senate to act on the Akaka bill before the House will consider the Filner bill and schedule it for a floor vote. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi assumed the House leadership after the November 2006 Democratic sweep, she quickly passed the PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) rule which compels new spending or tax changes to not add to the federal deficit and for new bills to be either "budget neutral" or offset with savings derived from existing funds.

Rep. Filner insists that there are funds available for his bill from veterans’ earmarks that were not used. But Filner has been asked to identify which veteran’s earmarks he is referring to as other veterans groups are also eyeing the same pot. Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Filner have to work together to identify the pot from which the Filipino veterans bill can be funded.

Meanwhile, American Legion officials have expressed a willingness to meet with Philippine Ambassador Willie Gaa to discuss dropping their opposition to the equity bill if the bill's supporters can assure the Legion that funds for the bill will not be taken away from funds for US veterans.

As the debate over the equity bill continues on Capitol Hill, the American Coalition for the Filipino Veterans paused to mourn 15 of its veteran members who died just in the last month. These veterans had actively participated in various mass actions in support of the bill but sadly will not be around to see it passed.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is thanked for her cosponsorship of the Filipino Veterans Equity and Family Reunification bills by (L to R) Rodel Rodis, San Franciso Community College Board Trustee, Angelesio Tugado, 86, DC leader of the American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, and Edna Rodis, R.N. in the Washington office on February 12, 2008. (ACFV photo by Eric Lachica).

PRESS RELEASE: RODIS RULING APPEALED TO THE US SUPREME COURT

By Felix Antero

SAN FRANCISCO - The five-year-old case of the $100 bill tendered by Filipino American lawyer Rodel Rodis which a Walgreens manager and San Francisco police officers mistakenly thought was counterfeit may yet wind up in the US Supreme Court.

This developed after the San Francisco City Attorney's Office on February 11 filed a writ with the US Supreme Court appealing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' denial on February 6 of the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) petition to rehear en banc its earlier decision affirming the Northern District Court's denial of qualified immunity to two SFPD officers who mistakenly arrested Rodis on February 17, 2003.

"I am disappointed that the City Attorney has decided to take this case to the US Supreme Court hoping that the conservatives in that court will reverse the Ninth Circuit decision and give police officers the unbridled license to arrest anyone without probable cause," Rodis said.

The Ninth Circuit's denial of the rehearing request follows its August 28, 2007 decision ruling that the police officers, Sergeant Jeff Barry and Officer Michelle Liddicoet, are not entitled to qualified immunity because they did not have probable cause to arrest Rodel Rodis, a long-time member of the San Francisco City College Board of Trustees.

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine which protects government officers if they did not violate a plaintiff's clearly established statutory or constitutional rights; probable cause refers to reasonable grounds to arrest given the totality of the circumstances.

The petition for a rehearing was filed after the 2-1 ruling of the appellate court held that just because the Walgreens manager was suspicious of the bill that Rodis used to complete his purchase at the store in February 2003 was not sufficient basis to arrest, handcuff and detain him at a police station for almost two hours.

While Rodis was detained, the US Secret Service determined that the bill used by Rodis was genuine. But even if it had been counterfeit, the court majority said, innocently passing a counterfeit bill is not a crime, and police had no evidence that Rodis thought the bill was a fake.

"No reasonable or prudent officer could have concluded that Rodis intentionally and knowingly used a counterfeit bill," Judge Dorothy Nelson said in the majority opinion.

"Without at least some evidence regarding the knowledge or intent elements of the crime," the Court further held, "probable cause is necessarily lacking. To hold otherwise would render any individual vulnerable to arrest who, unknowingly, through the normal stream of commerce, comes to possess or use a counterfeit bill."

Dissenting Judge Consuelo Callahan said officers are allowed to make reasonable mistakes of fact without violating constitutional rights.

The case has attracted not only the attention of the local Filipino-American community but also legal scholars and other interested parties throughout the United States.

In support of SFPD's petition for rehearing, the California State Association of Counties (CSAC), a nonprofit corporation representing California's 58 counties, and the League of California Cities, which claims in its brief to be an "association of 478 California cities dedicated to protecting and restoring local control to provide for the public health, safety, and welfare of their residents," filed an amicus curiae brief. An amicus brief is a document filed in a legal proceeding by an interested
party who is not directly part of the case.

Rodis, a 3-term president of the San Francisco Community College Board of Trustees since 1991 and former president of the city's Public Utilities Commission, is seeking damages for the violation of his rights and the humiliation caused by his arrest.

Rodis' separate lawsuit against Walgreens was settled in 2004 for an undisclosed sum.

The Ninth Circuit ruling last week would have allowed Rodis to proceed with the federal jury trial phase of his lawsuit against SFPD Officers Barry and Liddicoet. The appeal to the US Supreme Court may cause a further two-year delay of the five-year old case.

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To see The Daily Case Report regarding this case, click here.

The Filipino American Catholic Vote

Filipino Americans are part of the broader Asian American group that constitutes 6% of the US population. Filipino American Catholics (85% of Filipinos are Catholics), however, are part of the larger US Catholic community that constitutes more than 25% of the registered voters in the country. That bit is also the largest group of swing voters in the US and is especially significant because Catholics have backed the winner of the “national popular vote” in every US presidential election since 1972.

As Jim Dwyer noted in his New York Times column, Catholics voted for five Republican and three Democratic presidents and one “popular-vote-winning but presidency-losing” Democrat, Al Gore. “No other large group has switched sides so often”, Dwyer wrote, “or been so consistently aligned with the winners. Over that same period, a majority of white Protestants typically voted Republican, while blacks of all faiths and Jews strongly backed Democrats”.

There was a time more than 40 years ago when US Catholics were overwhelmingly Democrats especially because of John F. Kennedy, the first and only Catholic ever to be elected US president. But now Catholics don’t even vote for Catholic Democrats. In 2004, Protestant George W. Bush received 53% of the Catholic vote over Catholic John F. Kerry who received 47%.

Catholics supported Bill Clinton in his two presidential runs and Hillary Clinton in her two senatorial campaigns including her re-election campaign against a Catholic Republican opponent. In the Super Tuesday New York presidential primary on February 5, 66% of the Catholic voters voted for Hillary compared to 30% for Barack Obama. Brian O'Dwyer attributed Catholics support for the Clintons to what he said was their attention to the issues ethnic and working-class Catholics cared about like social security, health care, education and immigration reform.

New York Assemblywoman Catherine T. Nolan believes there is another reason Catholics, especially older ones, support Hillary. It's because older Catholic voters grew up with women in charge of daily life, she said. “Maybe we’re a little bit more open to female leadership,” Ms. Nolan told Dwyer. “We had female role models from an early age. When I was growing up, all the Catholic school principals were women, and almost none of the public school principals were. The nuns were the people we saw every day, and they were running the whole show.”

Filipinos, unlike other Asians, are accustomed to seeing women in authority. There have been two female presidents in the Philippines since 1946 while there have been none in the US since George Washington became president in 1789.

Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980 and re-elected in 1984 on both occasions with the backing of what are still called the "Reagan Democrats". Who will this group of disaffected Democrats support this November?

Raymond Flynn, a former Democratic mayor of Boston who was president of the Washington DC-based Catholic Alliance, endorsed Bush over Gore in the 2000 elections because he felt abandoned by the Democratic Party on issues of trade, health care, and abortion. Flynn, who regularly speaks to Catholic groups all over the US, senses that Catholics are now returning to the fold. "Right now, the so-called Reagan Democrat, they're going Democrat," Flynn said. "Health care, education, human rights — these issues are so compelling in this election that they're voting Democrat."

A nationwide poll of Catholic voters conducted by the author (William D'Antonio) of "American Catholics Today: New Realities of Their Faith and Their Church," found 82% of Catholic Democrats and 52% of Catholic Republicans favored "more government funding to provide health care to poor children". This position was opposed by Pres. Bush who in 2007 vetoed the SCHIP (State Children Health Insurance Program) bill that would have extended health insurance to poor children. In the 2006 congressional elections, Democrats won 55% of the Catholic vote.

Two years earlier, in the 2004 presidential elections, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput openly endorsed Bush over Kerry because of their positions on abortion. But many Catholcs agreed with the National Catholic Register newspaper that opposition to the death penalty was also a “right to life” issue because abortion and the death penalty fall under the same Fifth Commandment heading -- “Thou Shall Not Kill.”

Most Catholics tend to be “Cafeteria Catholics”, picking and choosing which Catholic doctrine to accept or reject. Many liberal Catholics, for example, reject “creationism” and accept evolution, reject “pro-life” and are “pro-choice”. They support the church’s position on helping the poor and supporting a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Many conservative Catholics, on the other hand, oppose abortion and amnesty for illegal immigrants but support the death penalty and tax cuts for the wealthy.

With John McCain as the certain Republican Party presidential candidate, the “right to life” issue will be more complicated. In a 1999 statement to the San Francisco Chronicle, McCain said he did not advocate repealing Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. “I’d love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations.”

This position explains why John McCain received strong backing from pro-choice Republicans. In Missouri, those favoring completely legalized abortion voted 48 % for McCain. In California, McCain received 49 % of the vote from those who want abortion to be “mostly legal.”

With the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates holding generally similar views on abortion, more or less, Catholics will have to look at the candidates’ positions on war and peace, the death penalty, immigration reform, tax cuts, housing, economic justice, welfare reform, the federal deficit, civil liberties, education, and health care.

Filipino American Catholics will also have to look at the candidates' position on the Filipino Veterans Equity Bill which is supported by Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama and opposed by Sen. McCain.

Sliming Barack

If American voters were to choose between a candidate who supported keeping US troops in Iraq for another 100 years at a cost of $2 trillion for the last six years (and 3,000 US lives) or a candidate who vowed to pull US troops out and use the money saved for the health and education needs of Americans in the US, there would be no question that Americans would overwhelmingly vote for the latter.

But elections in the US are not decided by the people who vote for the candidate who best reflects their views and interests. They are decided by people adept at manipulating voters into supporting or opposing candidates according to their prejudices and fears.

In January of 2000, Sen. John McCain scored an impressive victory in the New Hampshire primary and was on his way to securing the 2000 Republican presidential nomination when he entered the South Carolina primary as the heavy favorite. But supporters of Texas Gov. George W. Bush found a clever KarlRovian way to stop McCain. They simply made poll survey phone calls asking South Carolina voters: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?"

In fact, there was no truth to the spurious claim other than the widely-known fact that McCain and his wife had adopted their daughter Bridget as a baby from Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh. But the “black” propaganda proved brutally effective as McCain lost the 2000 primary in South Carolina and the Republican nomination to George W. Bush.

A similar underhanded smear campaign is currently being waged against Sen. Barack Obama. In the last 2 months, I have already received more than a dozen emails from various sources asking the recipient to “forward the email to everyone you know. Would you want this man leading our country?”

Entitled “Who is Barack Obama?” the email claims that Obama is "the son of a Black MUSLIM from Kenya and a white ATHEIST from Kansas" who was educated in a "Wahabi Islamic fundamentalist school in Indonesia". The email also claims that Barack is a Muslim who took his oath of office as a US senator on a Koran and not on a Bible and that he will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance nor show any reverence for the US flag. It ends with this ominous warning: “The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the US from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States, one of their own!!!!”

Another anti-Obama Internet blast which I also received claims that Obama’s church, the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is anti-American, will only accept black parishioners and tilts toward Africa at the expense of the United States. The e-mail claims Obama is "certainly a racist" and "desires to rule over America while his loyalty is totally vested in a Black Africa."

At a Filipino social gathering I attended over the weekend, I heard a matron asking people "Have you heard?" and then proceeding to spread the anti-Obama information she had received via email and which she proclaimed to be gospel truth.

Even though I support Hillary Clinton, I could not help but ask the lady to please check her facts and not to blindly accept the scurrilous claims of the anonymously written emails forwarded to her. I suggested that she check out the www.snopes.com site referred to in the email as well as with www.factcheck.org to determine the truth of the allegations.

Both online sources, I told her, debunked the anti-Obama email information as false. Barack had never been a Muslim and his mother was not an atheist but one who instilled in him a respect for all religions. As Barack wrote in his book, Audacity of Hope, “In her mind, a working knowledge of the world’s great religions was a necessary part of any well-rounded education.”

Obama and his wife, Michelle, are members of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago which counts Oprah Winfrey as a member. The Trinity Church describes itself in its website as "a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian" and which "does not apologize for its African roots." It openly proclaims its commitment to Africa (where Oprah recently opened a school for girls in South Africa) and to the "historical education of African people in diaspora." Although the congregation is overwhelmingly black, it has a few white members and whites are welcomed at the church.


Obama took his oath of office before Vice President Dick Cheney on a Bible and not on a Koran and he regularly recites the pledge of allegiance.

The source of the anti-Obama smear is a January 2007 Insight Magazine article which is a publication owned by the News World Communications of Unification Church founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon which also owns the very pro-Bush, pro Republican Washington Times.

CNN sent reporter John Vause to Jakarta to check ont he Wahabi story and learned that the school Obama attended was not even a Muslim school. Hardi Priyono, the school’s deputy headmaster, told CNN: "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion."

Aside from the fact that I believe she is the most qualified, one of the reasons I support Sen. Hillary Clinton is my fear that the Republicans will have an easier time destroying (“swiftboating”) Barack in the general elections than they would Hillary who has been hit with everything that the GOP could possible throw at her since she became First Lady in 1993.

In the 2004 presidential elections, I received dozens of emails directed at Filipino Catholics telling us that Sen. John Kerry, the Catholic Democratic candidate, was pro-abortion and that it would be a mortal sin to vote for him. The email asked the recipient to forward the email to everyone they knew who was a concerned Catholic. This KarlRovian email campaign proved effective in delivering the Filipino vote to Bush.

We can expect the sliming of Barack Obama to be even more vicious. I just hope the Filipino community will focus on the issues and reject the slime that has already reared its ugly head in the campaign.

Myths of (Sentosa) Avalon

There are myths about the American legal system that Filipinos generally subscribe to, the most common of which is that it is generally free from the kind of corruption and political manipulation that its Philippine counterpart is subject to. But the Filipino nurses who were recruited by the Sentosa Recruitment Agency (SRA) to work at the Avalon Garden nursing home facility in New York entertain no such illusions. Their trial on trumped-up criminal charges is set to begin next week on January 28.

Their problems all began when they signed up with the SRA in the Philippines in 2004. They chose SRA over other nurse recruiters from the US because SRA offered to provide them with green cards for working at nursing home facilities, which individually petitioned them, upon their arrival in New York. As an added enticement, they were offered two months of free housing and reimbursement for all their travel expenses.

Among the Filipino nurses who signed up with SRA was Elmer Jacinto, the physician-nurse who topped the Philippine medical board exams in 2004 but who opted to work as a nurse in the US rather than as a doctor in the Philippines. Jacinto was recruited by SRA to work for the Franklin Center nursing home which signed up as his immigration sponsor.

The owner of the Philippine-based SRA, Francris Luyun, facilitated all the immigration paperwork for the nurses and even flew to New York to greet them when they arrived and to escort them to their staffing house.

A few days after their arrival, however, the nurses were informed by Luyun that they could not work for the nursing home facilities that petitioned them because they had no work permits (SRA forgot to submit them). Luyun mentioned that he could provide them temporary work through Sentosa Services where, it turned out, he was the recruitment contractor.

Because the nurses had no other choice, they accepted Sentosa’s offer. Jacinto and nine other nurses were given work at the Avalon Gardens nursing home while other nurses were doled out to about 12 different nursing homes. It turned out that all of them were owned and operated by Sentosa Care, LLC, whose CEO was Bent Philipson, the man who signed all the employment contracts with the Filipino nurses on behalf of the various New York nursing homes which had petitioned them.

They were not employees of the nursing homes where they worked but “agency nurses” employed by Sentosa Services to work as independent contractors at their assigned locations. They were paid below the prevailing wage of the Department of Labor and not paid for the overtime they were compelled to put in.

Felix Vinluan, the lawyer consulted by the nurses, reported that they were provided substandard living accommodations upon their arrival. “Some had to sleep on the cold floor; some had to alternate in using the beds; and most of them complained that their staff house was not properly heated. In fact, two of them who had to sleep on makeshift beds in the garage, because there was no more space for them inside the house,” Vinluan said.

The nurses complained to both Luyun and Philipson about their working conditions and about patient safety as they were tasked with taking care of 40 - 60 patients, but their complaints were ignored, prompting them to seek Vinluan’s counsel. Approximately 27 Filipino nurses, among the hundreds of nurses recruited by Sentosa, signed up with Vinluan who advised them all to file discrimination charges against their respective sponsoring or contracting employers with the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices.

Because they were employed by Sentosa Services and not by the nursing homes they were assigned to, and because they never signed employment contracts with Sentosa Services, Vinluan advised them that they were “at-will” employees who could resign anytime in the same way their employer could fire them anytime.

On April 6, 2006, the Filipino nurses at one Sentosa facility resigned at the end of their shifts, followed the next day by Filipinos working at four other Sentosa facilities including ten nurses at Avalon. In response, Philipson and Sentosa Care, LLC filed a civil suit for “breach of contract” against the Filipino nurses and a “tortious interference with contractual relations” cause of action against their lawyer, Vinluan. The nurses filed a cross-complaint against Sentosa for breach of contract. Sentosa then filed complaints against individual nurses with the New York Office of Professional Discipline (OPD) causing the licenses and permits of the nurses to be placed on hold.

The Filipino nurses filed administrative cases against the SRA in Manila for violations of Philippine recruitment rules and regulations before the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). On March 24, 2006, the POEA administrator issued a preventive suspension order against the SRA.

After US Sen. Charles Schumer contacted the POEA on behalf of Bent Philipson, a campaign contributor, the POEA lifted its suspension order just two weeks after it was issued. Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor also reportedly intervened to prompt the POEA to lift the suspension order.

On September 13, 2006, the New York Office of Professional Discipline (OPD) informed Vinluan that the administrative cases against the Filipino nurses were closed, and that there was “no finding of patient abandonment and that there was no good moral character issue that would prohibit the nurse-permittees from securing their limited permits or nursing licenses.”

After failing to secure a preliminary injunction against the Filipino nurses, Sentosa’s lawyer then sought a meeting with the District Attorney of Suffolk County to discuss their complaints against the Filipino nurses and Vinluan. Because Sentosa's lawyer was a heavy campaign contributor to the DA, he could call in some chips.

On March 22, 2007, the District Attorney secured a Suffolk County Grand Jury indictment against the 10 nurses working at Avalon Gardens, including Elmer Jacinto, as well as their attorney, Felix Vinluan, for “endangering the welfare of pediatric patients” at a Suffolk County nursing home. The nurse-defendants and their attorney have become known as the "Avalon 11".

Last week, the New York Department of Health released the results of its investigation, finding that the pediatric residents of Avalon Gardens "were not placed in jeopardy" by the mass resignation of 10 nurses in 2006. This report was released less than two weeks before the immigrant nurses are scheduled for a January 28 jury trial in Suffolk County, New York, on charges of conspiracy and endangering patients in a pediatric ventilation unit at the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center.

Despite this exculpatory report, the Avalon 11 defendants are still concerned about their case because of the political connections of Sentosa’s lawyer with the Suffolk County District Attorney. They have launched a campaign to convince New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer to appoint a Special Prosecutor to take over the case from the Suffolk County D.A. Members of the Filipino community are encouraged to send letters to Gov. Spitzer at the State Capitol, Albany, NY 12224 or by faxing him at 518-474-1513.

Will justice be a myth at the Avalon 11 trial?

Waves and Ripples

When Philippine President Gloria Arroyo visited the US State Department in 2003, then US Secretary of State Colin Powell complimented her for reaching out to the “2 million Filipinos and Filipino Americans in this country who are the living bond between our two great peoples”. Two million? A San Francisco Chronicle news article on December 8, 2007 reported that there are “2.3 million Filipinos who live in the United States, according to the census bureau (356,378 in the Bay Area)”.

In a news conference in Manila last month, US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney estimated that there are 3 million Filipinos in the US according to the US Embassy’s review of the number of US immigrant and non-immigrant visas issued to Filipinos. Three million? The most recent online Wikipedia encyclopedia entry on “Filipino Americans” reported that “in 2007, the Filipino American population numbered approximately 4 million, or 1.5% of the United States population.”

Just exactly how many are we?

The 2000 census that the San Francisco Chronicle relied on was defective and grossly undercounted the number of Filipinos in the US. Over the last 7 years, I have spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of Filipino “overstaying tourists” (a more apt and polite description than “undocumented aliens” or “illegal immigrants” or “TNTs”) and not one of them who was present in 2000 ever contacted the US Census Bureau to fill out the form that would document his or her presence in the US. If there were 500,000 of them in 2000, the 2000 census should have been 3 million. This half a million estimate has likely doubled by 2008.

Also, in the last 7 years, there have been at least 80,000 Filipinos each year who have legally immigrated to the US including thousands who married US citizens and adjusted their status in the US. Adding all the totals would bring the actual number of Filipinos in the US today to be closer to the 4-million Wikipedia estimate.

Historians and demographers generally agree that there were three “significant immigration waves” of Filipinos who have settled in the United States.

The “first wave” were the agricultural workers or "Sacadas", approximately 125,000 of them, who were brought to work in Hawaii and the West Coast from 1906 to 1935. After the Filipino Exclusion Act (otherwise known as the Tydings-McDuffie Philippine Independence Act) was passed in 1935, legal Filipino immigration to the US was reduced to 50 a year, a quota which lasted until 1965.

The “second wave” refers to the Filipinos, mostly in the US military, who came after 1946, including about 7,000 agricultural workers who were brought to Hawaii and referred to as the “1946 boys”, another 5,000 Filipinas who came after passage of the 1946 War Brides Act and 20,000 Filipino navy recruits who were brought into the US Navy to serve as stewards as part of the 1947 US-RP Military Bases Agreement.

The “third wave” of immigration started in 1965 after passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 which increased legal immigration from the Philippines from 50 to 20,000 a year, including about 4,000 a year for Filipino professionals.

The Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) believes there should be a separate category for pre-1906 Filipinos. Their numbers may not justify referring to them as "waves" but more as “ripples”.

The “first ripple” may refer to the Filipino mariners or sailors who worked on commercial ships that docked in US ports. Dozens of them jumped ship in New Orleans in or around 1825 and settled in St. Malo in Barataria Bay in Louisiana as documented in Lafcadio Hearn’s 1875 article which appeared in Harper’s Weekly (“The Mahogany-colored Manilamen of Louisiana”). An 1892 editorial in Graciano Lopez-Jaena’s La Solidaridad referenced the existence of Filipino mariner colonies in Philadelphia, New York and New Orleans. (A Filipino mariner from Manila named Francisco Escalante arrived in San Francisco in 1830 and officially became a citizen of San Francisco in 1849).

An “urban legend” has also appeared in several books reporting that Filipinos from Vera-Cruz, Mexico traveled across the Gulf of Mexico to Barataria Bay, Louisiana in 1763 and many opf them later joined Jean Lafitte’s buccaneers in the 1812 Battle of New Orleans.

A “second ripple” may refer to the Filipino Ilustrados who went to the US, instead of Spain, to further their education. In 1903, a group of 100 students (“fountain pen boys”) left for the United States to study in US colleges and universities. By 1910, all had returned back to play major roles in education, business and government.

A tiny ripple may have caused a major wave. According to Wikipedia, “a chance encounter in 1901 between a trustee of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters Association (HSPA) and a band of Filipino musicians en route to the United States led the planter to speculate about Filipinos as potential plantation workers, for he felt that these musicians had a "healthy physique and robust appearance." This led that trustee to recommend Filipinos as replacements for the Chinese, Japanese and Korean workers who were banned from immigrating to the US in 1906.

Aside from the 125,000 Filipino workers who comprised the “first wave”, there was a also a “third ripple” of Filipinos, numbering about 14,000, who came to the US to study and who returned back to the Philippines after completing their studies.
According to the 1960 US census, there were about 69,070 Filipinos in Hawaii and another 65,459 in California, the two states accounting for about 76% of all Filipinos in the US. The West Coast numbered about 146,340 Filipinos accounting for about 83% of the total while the East Coast and the South held slightly more than 10,000 each and the Mid-West numbered about 8,600.

By 1980, the official number reached 781,894, with 92% living in urban areas. By 1990, the numbers reached 1,450,512 with the West Coast accounting for 991,572, or 68.4%. California in 1990 contained almost 50 percent of the total with Hawaii falling to second place. The 1990 US Census showed that Filipinos lived in all 50 states with Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Washington each being home to more than 30,000 Filipinos.

Because numbers empower, let’s get our numbers right.

Profiles Encourage

The New Year began with the depressing news that deposed President Joseph Estrada was mulling a run for the presidency in 2010 if, he said, “the opposition fails to come to an agreement on a common candidate.” To ensure the opposition’s victory in 2010, he said he would willingly agree to be the unity candidate. How magnanimous.

This news story drove me nuts. Is the Philippine political system so bankrupt and lacking in leaders with moral scruples that a convicted plunderer like Estrada could actually be elected again?

My faith in the Filipino people was redeemed on January 5 when I attended a forum at the San Francisco Public Library and heard Quentin Pastrana, a recent MBA graduate from Georgetown University, speak about his new book, “Profiles Encourage: Ordinary Filipinos Making an Extraordinary Difference” (anvilpublishing.com).

Profiles is about ordinary Filipinos who can and should be candidates for the presidency of the Philippines, not the current crap of “presidentiables”, because they are people who are, as Pastrana writes, “living lives of concrete action, meaningful results, and enduring integrity... defining democracy and citizenship through their own lives, their own reach toward others”.

The book features inspiring profiles on: Jaime Aristotle Alip, Al Asuncion, Josette Biyo, John Burtkenley Ong, India and Javier Legaspi, Jika David, CP David, Nereus Acosta, Onofre Pagsanghan, and Milwida “Nene” Guevarra. Below is a brief profile on these outstanding Filipinos:

Dr. Jaime Aristotle Alip started a microfinance project in Laguna in 1986 called CARD (Center for Agricultural and Rural Development) to provide uncollateralized loans of up to 2,000 pesos ($45) “to help the poor help themselves”. Today the CARD group of companies has 160,000 clients (mostly women) all over the Philippines with a total outstanding loan portfolio of more than $20-M and with assets estimated at $35-M. Through Dr. Alip’s leadership, CARD has set a goal of reaching 1-M poor households by 2009 to provide them with low interest loans, and guidance and training in marketing, management, product development and input supply.

Al Asuncion was the Philippine Bantamweight Champion in the 1950s and was once the number 4 contender in the World Boxing Association (WBA) rankings. A friend and protégée of world heavyweight champion Rocky Marciano, Al fought in boxing matches all over the US and Europe and dutifully sent his earnings home to his family. After he retired from boxing, he spent the remainder of life teaching young kids (including 3 of the authors of the Profiles book) boxing skills and life lessons.

Josette Biyo, an unassuming science teacher from the Philippine Science High School in Iloilo City, was the first Asian Grand Winner of the prestigious Intel Excellence in Teaching Award which she received on May 17, 2002 in Louisville, Kentucky. She also holds the distinction of being the only Filipino to have a planet named after her, the Planet Biyo which rotates between Mars and Jupiter. While a science teacher in Iloilo, she regularly brought her students to the barangays to teach the barrio folks how to make cough syrup from plant extracts and soap from coconut oil.

John Burtkenley Ong was working as a researcher at the Manila Observatory of Ateneo when he was asked to document the ancestral domain claims of the Mangyan minorities in Mindoro. In order to file the Mangyan tribe’s claim to its ancestral lands, the tribe needed to identify the boundaries of their lands, which could only be determined with maps. But he could not teach the Mangyans his knowledge of map-making because the Mangyans lacked basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills. So John learned the Mangyan language so he could teach them basic skills to help them preserve their cultural heritage and their lands.

India and Javier Legaspi, wife and husband, can be credited with reviving and reinvigorating the pina weaving tradition and industry in the Philippines from the moribund state it was in when they set up their Heritage Arts and Crafts in Kalibo, Aklan in 1988. India, the artist, “paints and weaves the designs that breathe new life into centuries-old craft” while Javier, the mechanical engineer, “adds strength and form by reinventing the looms.” Heritage’s production capacities, Pastrana writes, are already booked for 2007 and 2008 filling export orders from American and European firms. Heritage is developing new products and expanding into new markets to increase the income and livelihood of the 20,000 women and men engaged in the whole range of the hand-woven fiber industry.

Jika David, the daughter of Prof. Randy David and Karina Constantino-David, was set to climb the corporate ladder of Unilever Philippines when, after 4 years on the job, she applied for a sabbatical in 2004 to work with the Jesuit Volunteers Philippines Foundation in Barrio Macarascas in Palawan. After teaching mathematics to rural kids whose poverty deprived them of the means to realize their dreams, Jika founded DORM (Deepening Our Rural Minds) and raised the funds to keep the school going for another year and send four of its graduates to Manila to further their education.

CP David, the brother of Jika and also a grandson of nationalist historians Renato and Leticia Constantino, received tempting offers from US firms after obtaining his PhD in Geology and Environmental Sciences from Stanford University in 2003. Instead, he returned back to the Philippines and established the UP Environmental Monitoring Laboratory to compile data for weather monitoring and mine pollution monitoring. He invented the Automated Monitoring System (AMS) to compile and transmit weather data via text messaging. His dream is to clean up the Pasig River.

Nereus Acosta set up BINHI (Bukidnon Integrated Network of Home Industries, Inc.), a Grameen-modeled microfinance and cooperative movement, which he founded in 1991 and which, Pastrana writes, has “transformed not only the beneficiaries’ lives but even the province’s culture from dependency, to action self-reliance, and hope.”

Onofre Pagsanghan founded the Dulaang Sibol more than 50 years ago at the Ateneo High School where he has been teaching up to the present. Imagine Mr. Keating, portrayed by Robin Williams, in “Dead Poets Society” and you can visualize the impact that “Mr. Pagsi” has had on his students.

Milwida “Nene” Guevarra, a former Finance Undersecretary, founded the Synergeia Foundation which seeks to deliver quality education through “collaborative responsibility” by transforming local school boards into vehicles for meaningful community participation. In the 250 municipalities where Synergeia has established roots (from the 17 it began with in 2003), the results can be seen in the rise of the test scores of those students from an average of 49% to 75% in reading proficiency and mathematics.

Profiles Encourage is dedicated to the memory of the late Sen. Raul Roco who was probably the best president the Philippines never had. In the book’s Epilogue is a speech Roco delivered in 2003 where he extolled the people to “learn to live by what we say."

"We must walk our talk. Competence, Character, Courage and Commitment, then we can have sustainable human growth, sustainable development among ourselves… It is good to have money. But the more important thing is strong human values and strong human efforts to excel. That must come from within…It must come from the Filipino.”

Faith restored.