MikeLigalig.com

Hi friends. I would like to start this topic of sharing articles and stories I read (others I personally wrote) that talks about DISCRIMNATION. Feel free to share your articles, too

The Color of Our Skin
By: Gener Marcelo
 
Our company issued a company car for my official and personal use. All seems to be well except for a fact that I couldn't use it unless I had a local Driver's License. "Ok, no big deal.” I quipped.
I recall how easily I got my Driver's License in just one day way back in the Philippines. No, I didn't bribe anybody in the Licensing Office just to get my license but went on with the usual application procedure. I took and passed the physical, written and actual driving test as required and with all these in mind, I thought that the process could be the same here in the Middle East.

After giving my personal details and with our company's Liaison Officer securing other requirements, we went straight to the local Licensing Office. The assessment and payment of fees were done in a breeze. "Well it's faster like what I thought". But when I was told by the Licensing Officer that I have to undergo a driving lesson as a requirement for a first time driver, I argued that I have already 15 years driving experience in the Philippines and it just so happened that I was not able to renew my driver's license prior to my overseas travel. My argument rendered futile and I finally conceded. "Well, I could just pretend to have the driving lesson; anyway I’m sure I will pass it."

The laugh in my face vanished when I saw the adventure that I'm about to face. The number of applicants was enormous and just like me, all are very eager to get their respective turn on the wheel - elbowing and pushing one another just to be the first in line to take the driver's seat. The pandemonium was caused by the fact that there were only a handful of instructors and test vehicles to use. With the soaring heat and humidity enough to make your sweat glands work overtime, the mayhem is an allegory of the rice shortage in the Philippines where my countrymen are shoving every inch of space to avail of that government regulated rice at a lower price. Going back to the scenario, adding nuisance to an already chaotic situation was the lack of discipline and total disregard of etiquette. First to come will be the first to serve? Forget it. Blame it to cultural differences.

I couldn't remember how many times I blew my top shouting whenever somebody tries to intrude or cut into our queue lane. But the effort turned futile, the intruder will just look at me with a smirk on his face. In such a chaotic situation everybody was obstinate. I ended my first day of driving lesson exhausted and almost on the brink of giving up. But every time I was on the brink of near surrender, I just found my feet dragging me back to the pandemonium to experience another day of lawlessness.
 
Days passed into weeks and the scenario remains the same. With my sun-burnt face and arms, one can easily tell that I have toiled under the sun for a long period of times - how about two weeks? I couldn't believe myself that I survived that ordeal and I almost shout for joy when I was recommended to proceed to Stage 2 Reverse Parking Test. Though the situation was not as chaotic as the first but the punishing heat and high humidity was truly unbearable.

While in line and waiting for my turn, I saw frustrations in varying forms from the face of these people. Either they weren't able to give a good driving maneuver that will surely leave an indelible ink to impress the driving instructor or maybe the growing impatience is getting on their toll. After all, these people are also human beings just like me who experienced and felt the same frustrations as I did. At that very moment, I feel ashamed of myself and I realized that the only thing that differentiates us is the color of our skins or maybe if one may add, our difference in languages, culture and socio economic status. But at that time, I realized that one's status should not be used as an excuse to give one an edge or priority over the other simply because of one reason, we are all humans regardless of the color our skin. Nonetheless, after having been soaked under the sun my skin color is no less than one and the same color as these crowd and if I cloak within the crowd, one cannot distinguish me from them only that my eyes are prominently of an Oriental-Asian race. I don't know what happens next but I just found myself engrossed with the crowd and leisurely conversing with them. At the end of that day, I found new friends, an Indian, a Pakistani and one Bangladeshi.
 
I passed the Stage 2 Reverse Parking Test which signals the end of our conversation but not our friendship. I moved to the last part of the testing which is the driving theory. The test is to be administered by a local police where one has to answer questions randomly selected by a computer. I took the test and failed in my first attempt. I was not even been able to finish the entire test for the system will terminate automatically since I incurred two consecutive mistakes. I was flabbergasted of the result not because the test was difficult but perhaps I let over-confidence took the hell out of me.

After a week, my schedule of test retake, I went to the examination room and I saw my friends who were about to take the exam the first time. I passed the test that time though I don't know if my friends were successful on their first attempt. All I know is that this humbling experience taught me one important lesson in life - that no matter how different we are from each other, we still have lot of things to share.



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Greed Not Financial Crisis
By Gener Marcelo

The news I read from the internet reported that unemployment rate in January of 2009 rose by 0.3 percentage point to 7.7 percent in January. Translating these figures into layman’s terms, it means that for the month of January alone, there were 2.8 million unemployed Filipinos. NSO data showed that of 37.1 million Filipinos who applied for a job, only 34.3 million got the jobs.
The country’s jobless rates climbed and this would rise further owing to the fact that there are about 275,000 people who lost their jobs since October last year. This figure is expected to rise with the addition of numbers of fresh graduates this March. Analysts said it would rise further as the country feels the impact of financial crisis.

Job Mismatch is Caused by Obsolete School Curriculum

 While there may be plenty of jobs available in the Philippines, job placement agencies claim that job seeker’s skills didn’t matched the required skills for the jobs. This is mainly because the curriculum that the students were getting from formal schoolings doesn’t match with the demand of the jobs that these future graduates will pursue in the future. Take for example the subjects being taught (still) in the colleges and universities. There are still History subjects, Rizal’s Work, Spanish, Panitikan, etc. Well, I’m not saying that they should not be taught to every Filipino student but these subjects should have “proper” place in the school curriculum. Introducing these subjects in the primary and secondary levels are enough but not anymore in college. Instead, CHED should initiate a thorough review of tertiary level curriculum and focus more on subjects which are requisite of specific course and put additional units in on-the-job training or internship. Perhaps, engineering courses instead of the usual 5-year program can be shortened to 4-year courses without sacrificing the knowledge and skills to be learned.

However, there are those who can meet or even excel the skills and experience required by the job but were not accepted anyway because of age factor. While others, gifted with talent (and the age factor on their side) opted to work abroad in exchange of hefty salary.  As a result, the Philippines continuously lose its battle on brain-drain while the problem of job mismatch is also increasing exponentially.

Greed Not Financial Crisis

The rising unemployment rate has always been the problem of the Philippines even before the financial global crisis. While it is true that economic crunch contributes to the rising numbers of unemployed and underemployed. However it is the unabated corruption in most government dealings and its agencies that are causing this social problem (unemployment) since the early beginning.

Low income earners and middle class Filipinos who had insured education of their children into various pre need companies, hoping that one day, they could provide better education for their children end up victims of these greedy businessmen who made used of their “intelligence” to dupe unsuspecting or gullible investors. Worse, the government agency, mandated to protect the interest of the general public ends up with some of its official, either conniving or taking part of the share in the “loot bag.”  As a result; no formal or proper education means unemployment.
At the end of the day, one need not be a financial wizard or a degree in economics from A.I.M. to understand the cause of Filipino sufferings but a careful analysis and right decision of who you will put to the position to run our country this coming 2010 election.


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Don’t judge a customer by the way he looks
By Karen Galarpe
06/05/09
Posted under customer service

ONE of my close friends is a very simple person. An engineer and head of her own trading company, she is most at home in jeans and casual shirts, and can live without makeup or flashy jewelry.

She was just telling me a few days ago how some business establishments could be so judgmental.

Recently, she went to a high-end department store because she needed to buy a whole new set of makeup to replace her whole kit. She went to the counter of a well-known international brand. Another customer, a woman who was dressed well, was there too and asked about lipsticks. The counter personnel kept on attending to the woman, showing her all the different colors of lipstick they have and encouraging her to try them on. My friend would ask for some items, which they would give her, but they did not really attend to her in the same way or offered to put on makeup on her.

In the end, my friend bought a whole set of cosmetics from that brand while the woman left with just one lipstick purchase.

“I told them they should have attended to me with the same level of attention they gave the other woman. It turned out I bought more than she did,” my friend said. “I could relate to Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman when she was discriminated on in a Beverly Hills store because of how she looked.”

In another incident, my friend and her husband used the valet service at the five-star hotel they go to regularly for the buffet. Now her husband is the more “maporma” between them and would always be the one to hand over the car keys to the valet and claim the car. One time, her husband had to talk to someone, and so my friend gave the claim stub to the valet counter. Other wealthy-looking people also came to claim their cars after her. My friend did not say anything but noticed that the other people were serviced first.

After what seemed like thirty minutes later, she was still waiting for their car when her husband came out and wondered why it is taking so long. When the valet, who knew my friend’s husband by this time, saw him, he greeted my friend’s husband, “O boss, kayo pala. Yung claim stub niyo po?” My friend’s husband told him that his wife has been there a long time waiting for their car. The valet said they should have been informed that it is for him so they would get their car first.

My friend could not let this pass and asked the valet if this is how they service customers – favoritism for the wealthier-looking ones? And so she told them that from then on, they should not expect a tip from them. They have been back to that hotel a number of times but my friend still refuses to give the valets a tip.

Another friend of mine who used to work in the administration office of a bargain center in Divisoria told me how interesting it is to see people in plain shirts and tsinelas coming in and paying their leases in cash by the bayong. “They are the unassuming rich. It’s true—you should never judge a book by its cover,” she said.





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OFWs in Mideast fear branding as flu carriers

By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 11:43:00 06/05/2009

MANILA, Philippines—An overseas Filipino workers’ group in the Middle East called on the government on Thursday to protect Filipinos from being discriminated against as carriers of the dreaded Influenza A (H1N1) virus.

"The OFW communities here in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East are fearful and uneasy, especially since the first case of the Influenza A (H1N1) came from us Filipinos," Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona said in answer to an email query.

Monterona was asked to comment on reports that the Saudi government confirmed on Wednesday that a sick Filipino nurse who arrived in Riyadh Friday last week was the kingdom's first case of the disease.

There are an estimated two million Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and about a million more in the rest of the Middle East.

Monterona, who is based in Riyadh, said the Philippine government should issue health advisories through the Philippine posts in the region and launch a campaign in the OFW sector on how to avoid the novel flu virus.

The Department of Health should also consider sending its health experts to countries where H1N1 flu cases among OFWs would be reported to ensure prompt and proper medical treatment of Filipinos, Monterona said.

"We appeal for the government to make proper representation and to closely collaborate with the host government in this matter," he added.

Migrante-ME, in a statement Thursday morning, earlier called on the Arroyo administration to put on hold the export of OFWs amid the rising number of H1N1 flu infections around the world.


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Hi Manay Tess, galing ako sa bakasyon, almost 2 months din and during that time of hybernation, I had a self-imposed rule of no writing - no PC but strictly family affairs only.

Manay sa halagang 200 pesos tinangihan ka? Sana inilabas mo ang mga dolyares sa wallet mo ewan ko lang baka maturete yung pobreng sales lady na yun

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Talagang nakakalungkot ang mga socilal injustices at discrimination sa lipunan na ating ginagalawan, hindi lang sa Pilipinas ngunit maging sa ibang bansa din.

Here is another stories as published in the PDI today.

Gay Filipino gets asylum in historic US case

By Rodel Rodis
INQUIRER.net

Close this CALIFORNIA, United States—A gay Filipino was granted political asylum in an historic US case.

Because Philip Belarmino, 43, was subjected to rapes and repeated sexual harassments as a boy and because Philippine police are “known to be corrupt” and the Philippine government is “unable to curtail their corruption,” a San Francisco immigration judge ruled on May 21, 2009 that Belarmino was entitled to political asylum in the US.

Belarmino, an English professor in the Philippines who entered the US on a visitor’s visa in 2005, had been placed in deportation proceedings for overstaying his visa. Through his immigration attorney, Ted Laguatan, he subsequently applied for political asylum by claiming that he would be subjected to persecution in the Philippines because of his sexual orientation.

At his individual merits hearing, Belarmino recounted that when he was as young as nine years old, he had been forced to engage in oral and anal sex by older bullies. He recalled that at age 16, he was repeatedly raped by a houseboy who threatened him with a knife. He said that he did not report the rapes to the police for fear that they vwould only extort money from him or even use him for “their sexual pleasures.”

Immigration Judge Loreto Geisse found Belarmino’s testimony to be credible and determined that he would suffer persecution on the basis of his “membership in a particular social group” which was being a homosexual in the Philippines and granted him asylum.

Just eight years before Belarmino’s case, a gay Mexican (Boer-Sedano), who similarly applied for political asylum, claimed at his San Francisco Immigration Court hearing on November 15, 2001 that he would suffer persecution in Mexico because of his gender. He testified that he was repeatedly raped by a “high ranking police officer” who pointed a gun to his head and told him that if he killed him, he was certain that would not be charged with murder but congratulated for “cleaning up society.”

On November 20, 2001, the immigration judge (IJ) denied Boer-Sedano’s application for asylum ruling that he had failed to establish past persecution “on account of a protected basis” and that he had failed to seek protection from the authorities. The IJ concluded that the sex acts that Boer-Sedano was forced to perform by the police officer were simply “a personal problem” he had with this officer.

The IJ further concluded that Boer-Sedano had not established a well-founded fear of persecution because “he was not subject to systematic persecution which prevented him from living his chosen life style” and because there was no evidence of systematic official persecution of homosexuals in Mexico.

Boer-Sedano appealed the IJ’s decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which subsequently affirmed the IJ’s ruling without opinion. He then appealed the BIA decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

To qualify for asylum, an alien applicant must show that he was a refugee or one “who is unable or unwilling to return to his native country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The IJ had rejected Boer-Sedano’s argument that he was persecuted on account of his membership in the particular social group of male homosexuals in Mexico because she found that this did not constitute a particular social group for asylum purposes.

On August 12, 2005, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the IJ and the BIA erred because “alien homosexuals” constitute a particular social group. “Whether particular acts constitute persecution for asylum purposes is a legal question…We have held that sexual assault, including forced oral sex, may constitute persecution… Therefore, there can be no doubt that the nine sex acts that Boer-Sedano was forced to perform rise to the level of persecution.”

The Ninth Circuit further determined that Boer-Sedano’s failure to seek help from officials was understandable given the status of the officer who was victimizing him and the fear he had as a gay man living in a country where homosexuality, while not a crime, is socially unacceptable.

The difference in the immigration judges’ contrasting decision in the cases of Belarmino and Boer-Sedano also show that applying for political asylum is like playing Russian roulette—land the right judge and you win, land the wrong judge and you lose.

In the summer of 2001, two Egyptian male lovers came to the US for a vacation. After they overstayed their visas, they were placed in removal (deportation) proceedings. Because they did not apply within one year of their arrival, they could not apply for political asylum but they could apply for “withholding of removal,” which is a form of relief similar to asylum.

Married couples can usually appear before the same judge but because the Egyptians were not married to each other, they were assigned to different judges. The one assigned to an IJ who denied more than 90 percent of the asylum claims before him denied his withholding of removal application and ordered him deported back to Egypt. The other one who was assigned to a more liberal judge was granted his relief and subsequently received a green card.

Both had filed similar claims alleging past harassment, beatings, hospitalization, and lack of police response but received opposite results. Even though Boer-Sedano had a stronger argument for asylum in 2001 than Belarmino did in 2009, the immigration judges who heard their cases differed in their rulings.

Commenting on the historic significance of the Belarmino ruling, lawyer Ted Laguatan stated: “This decision by Judge Geisse gives a strong message to the world that gay people should not be persecuted for being gay. Persecuting gay people is no different from persecuting people simply because they are of a different color or nationality. This decision provides encouragement and hope to gay communities in their struggle to end discrimination and harassment against them.”



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Thanks Gener for sharing to us your life experiences.  Discrimination is an incurable virus which is globally alloted, isn't?  I used to encounter such personal condemnation. This art of judging, I just considered it to be a jealousy practice and  shows ignorance.

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Perhaps it’s about time to advice this blind-folded lady to put down her sword and scale for a moment and seek the advice of an ophthalmologist.
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