Conceived and born of a marriage of convenience
of liberal and conservative parents from the White House
and the Senate, the immigration test tube baby known as
“The Grand Bargain” died on June 28, 2007 of severe
complications from a procedural vote with two-thirds of
the Senate Republicans ganging up to claim credit for
the death blow, explaining their vote with the simple
talk radio mantra that was effectively used to kill it –
death to amnesty!
Perhaps its defeat was a failure of marketing. If it had
been labeled the "Registration of Illegal Aliens Act",
it might have exploited the rationale provided by
President George W. Bush who insisted that the national
security interests of the US required the federal
government to be aware of the identities and whereabouts
of at least 12 million people living and working in the
US.
The two Republican senators who led the assault on the
bill, Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) and Jim DeMint (R-South
Carolina), hailed the bill’s defeat as a “victory for
the American people”. Victory, the New York Times
editorial opined, “if you favor semiporous borders,
rotting crops, and millions of people growing old
overseas as they wait to enter legally. If you want
federal officials to keep thimble-dipping the immigrant
ocean with raids and detentions that shatter families
and cripple businesses, and state and local government
to go on erecting a ramshackle grid of disjointed
immigration policies, then this debacle was for you.”
For the Filipino community, this was an enormous defeat.
The bill contained the Akaka Amendment, sponsored by
Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), that would have provided
at least 35,000 immediate relative visas to the married
and unmarried offspring of Filipino WWII veterans with
approved immigrant visas. If the bill had been approved,
they would have had a chance to join their veteran
fathers in the US while their fathers are still alive.
With their octogenarian fathers dying at an exponential
rate and with their petitions being extinguished with
their fathers' deaths, the chances are slim for most of
them to immigrate to the US.
Along with this number are approximately 400,000 other
Filipino relatives in the Philippines with approved
immigrant visas “growing old overseas” while waiting
decades for their priority dates to be current so that
they can immigrate to the US. The bill contained a
provision that would have added additional immigrant
visas to clear the backlog within four (4) years.
The bill’s defeat is especially painful to the estimated
600,000 Filipinos in the US who are “overstaying
tourists”, what Filipinos humorously refer to as TNTs,
folks who are tago ng tago (hiding and hiding) and takot
na takot (very fearful of being caught). There is
nothing humorous at all about their marginalized
existence, working for minimum or even below-minimum
“under the table” wages, unable to obtain drivers
licenses, always worried that each morning might be
their last free moment in the sun if they are
apprehended by federal immigration agents.
"Title V of the bill provides 400,000
immigrant visas a year directed towards speeding
up the issuance of immigrant visas for those in
the backlog."
The immigration reform bill would have provided them
with probationary Z visas and a path to eventual
legalization after a decade of good moral conduct (no
criminal acts), being regularly employed, paying taxes
and learning to read and speak English.
Perhaps no one gloated more gleefully at the defeat of
the immigration bill than right-wing columnist Michelle
Malkin, who has made a career out of bashing illegal
aliens in her columns which regularly appear in over 200
newspapers in the US and in her regular TV appearances
on The O'Reilly Factor and in Hannity & Combes.
The irony of course is that this right-wing pit bull was
born as Michelle Maglalang to a Filipino physician
father, Dr. Apollo Maglalang, and a Filipina
schoolteacher mother, Rafaella. Her Filipino parents
immigrated to the US in 1969 as a result of the passage
of an immigration reform bill in 1965 that was
co-authored by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), the
same co-author of the current immigration reform bill
opposed by Malkin.
Malkin and other right-wing ideologues like Pat Buchanan
favor the old immigration law that was in existence from
1920 to 1965 that capped annual immigration at 150,000 a
year and which provided immigrant visas to people who
easily assimilated into the American fabric. The favored
immigration policy of right-wingers was heavily slanted
towards European immigration as the quota for each
country was arbitrarily based on the percentage of
immigrants who entered the US through Ellis Island in
1920. Thus, if Germans were 35% of the total percentage
of the people who immigrated to the US in 1920, then
they would be allotted 35% of the total number of
immigrant visas doled out each year. Until 1965, the
rest of the world, outside of Europe, would be limited
to no more than 50 immigrant visas a year. This
restriction even included the Philippines after the
country became a US commonwealth in 1935.
If Sen. Kennedy had not persevered in pushing for the
liberalization of US immigration laws to allow for
expanded family immigration and the inclusion of
professionals from countries like the Philippines,
Michelle’s parents would never have had the opportunity
to immigrate to the US and Michelle would never have
been born in the US. In fact, tens of thousands of
Filipino physicians in the US who have registered as
Republicans (like Michelle’s father) would not have been
able to immigrate to the US if it wasn’t for Sen.
Kennedy, who is regularly bashed by these very same Fil-Am
Republicans. What's that about our utang na loob (debt
of gratitude)?
Unfortunately, like Michelle, many of these Filipinos
who have made it in America have chosen to pull up the
ladder that brought them to success in America to
prevent others from being able to climb up that ladder
as they did. It was a ladder that others before them
worked to set up for them.
Those Filipinos seeking to climb up the ladder to make
it in America, as Michelle Maglalang and her parents
have done, must organize themselves to have a voice in
policy, to counter the relentless bashing of Michelle
Malkin. While millions of undocumented Mexican
immigrants have organized themselves into a political
force, demonstrating in rallies throughout the US and
presenting a human face to their issues, the Filipino
TNTs have stayed in the background, out of the radar,
not wishing to speak out about their issues and their
plight. In part, this is cultural as it is an Asian
belief that the nail that sticks out is the one that
gets pounded.
But this cultural belief runs counter to the old
American saw that the greasy wheel gets the grease. If
you don't speak up and speak out, as the Mexican
undocumenteds have done, you won't get the attention you
need for your issues. The 600,000 Filipino TNTs in the
US (1 out of every 5 or 6 of us) have to organize
themselves to make the issue of their legalization a top
priority for the community just as the passage of the
equity bill for Filipino WW II veterans issue has been
in the past few years.
They must ask that Filipinos who came up the ladder laid
for them by others before them must also work to keep
the ladder down for others as well.
RODEL E. RODIS
Rodel Rodis is a California attorney with a special emphasis on immigration law. He can be reached at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or by calling (415) 334-7800. Send comments to Rodel50 @ aol.com
Rodel Rodis is a California attorney with a special emphasis on immigration law. He can be reached at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or by calling (415) 334-7800. Send comments to Rodel50 @ aol.com