How do some Pinoys plan to use their stimulus money

“COVID-19, are you going to be naughty or nice to me?” 

―Steven Magee

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

SOME Filipinos in New York excited to receive their share of the federal government’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package this week have different plans for their money.

“Unahin ko muna ang pambayad sa rent namin sa apartment at ang iba e save ko (I will first prioritize the payment for the rental of our apartment and save the rest),” vowed Sunnyside, Queens resident Charlie, 56, who will get a total of $2,800 ($1,400 each for him and his wife).

Charlie, a driver in a laundry shop delivery van, and his wife, a former midwife in Tarlac, who now works in an assisted living facility in the Long Island, are among the approximately nine million New York state households who are qualified for more than $22 billion in direct payments.

They have no child.

The much-ballyhooed $1.9 trillion stimulus package is expected to be approved by the House of Representatives this week and signed into law by President Joseph Biden. 

The stimulus payments will be $1,400 for single people who earn $75,000 or below, a head of household earning $112,500 or less, and married couples making $150,000 or below. 

Those with kids will also get up to $1,400 for each child.

 

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“Pambayad ng utang (it’s a payment for my debt),” enthused Rodel, 48, a midtown Manhattan hotel maintenance crew member from Bamban, Tarlac. “The stimulus money will not only help the economy of America, it will also help us individually.”

“Unemployed ako ngayon kaya malaking tulong yan sa aming magasawa (the money is a big help for me and my wife because I am now unemployed),” Gerald, 62, chef in a Filipino restaurant who was furloughed in springtime last year after the imposition of lockdown in New York state.

Raymund, 52, delivery crew in a wine shop in Bronx, said he will use the money when he goes for a vacation in Talisay City, Negros Occidental in May. “Dugay pa man ang May pero daku nga bulig ang stimulus money para may galastoson ako sa Talisay (It’s a big help for my expenses when I go home to Talisay in May).”

“Wala kami ya nadala. Dapat may social security number gid gali (we’re not included because we don’t have a social security number),” sobbed Jennifer, 50, a caregiver from Tanza-Baybay, Iloilo City. 

“Sabi ni misis huwag na daw muna namin galawin ang pera kasi naghahanda kami sa retirement ko (my wife told me not to touch the money yet while we are waiting for my retirement),” said Leonardo, 64, of Morong, Rizal. 

Leonardo and his wife will get their combined $2,800 money through direct deposit in the ATM card.

Others will get their stimulus checks by mail.

 

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Beth Fertig explained in the Gothamist that “while some New Yorkers are feeling underwhelmed by the expected stimulus, fiscal watchdogs say it will still benefit many New Yorkers.”

Doug Turetsky, a spokesman for the city’s Independent Budget Office, said the bill “gets substantial dollars into the hands of lower and middle-income New Yorkers, which will help them as well as bolster city tax collections.”

Based on 2018 data, he said almost 3.2 million tax filers in the city will be eligible for all or part of the stimulus checks. Almost 700,000 are not eligible, including undocumented immigrants, because they do not have Social Security numbers.

But direct payments are just one piece of the stimulus package. It also includes a child tax credit worth up to $300 a month per child and extends unemployment payments of $300 a week until September. And there are billions of dollars to help schools reopen safely, which will help families caring for children re-enter the workforce, said Molly Weston Williamson, director of the paid leave and future of work program at A Better Balance, a non-profit dedicated to working families’ needs.

 

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A few New Yorkers do have bigger plans for their stimulus checks, according to Fertig. 

“I’ll put it towards my new car,” said Sae Gordon, 25, who was taking a break from his two jobs on a bench in downtown Brooklyn.

Gordon said he did not qualify for last year’s stimulus because he was still considered a dependent, but he is filing for himself this year. 

Even though he said he didn’t have a great need for the money, he said everyone should get stimulus aid because “this pandemic is something new to everybody.” 

Azaria Belfon is a registered nurse in the city’s jails who claimed she did not lose any money last year and just bought tickets to take her older child to Disney World for spring break. 

But she said that does not mean she does not deserve the $4,200 she will collect as a head of household with two children.

“Of course I should be entitled,” she said. “Because during the time that everyone was not working and I was working, they were getting unemployment,” she explained, adding that she also worked while pregnant.

“I didn't get any of that. I didn't even get a raise for my job. The most we got is a thank you. That's it. So I think I am more entitled to that money than anyone else because we got nothing during a pandemic.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

 

Alex P. Vidal Quotes

 

Why we are being targeted

“The hardest thing I had to overcome in life? I think racism. That’s so difficult because I don’t think anyone can ever understand it. It’s not that people don’t want to understand it, but they don’t want to touch it.”

—Herschel Walker

By Alex P. Vidal

 

BASED on what I have personally experienced and heard from the news and from fellow Asians in New York, attacks on Asian-Americans in the United States have accelerated during the pandemic and were reported to be skyrocketing once again after a brief “silence.”

The harassment and violence were reportedly fueled by misinformation, the rhetoric of former U.S. President Donald Trump and “a history of anti-Asian discrimination in the United States.”

The recent spate of harassment and violence against Asian-Americans, most notably in California and in New York City has prompted many Asians to consider how they can take action when they encounter anti-Asian discrimination in our community.

Asians living in the United States have been dealing with two frightening viruses: COVID-19 or coronavirus and its mind-boggling variant and racism since 2020.

It’s a common knowledge that coronavirus originated from Wuhan in China and more than 500,000 Americans have died as of March 9.

Some non-Asians think human beings with squinty eyes or even those afflicted with Microphthalmia (small eyes) are from Asia and, henceforth, could be carriers of coronavirus.

It’s not hard to notice some irate non-Asian characters plant dagger looks at our direction especially after we make a mistake of slightly sneezing or coughing while inside the bus and subway train.

 

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And even if we aren’t sneezing and coughing, some paranoid non-Asian passengers sometimes refuse to sit beside us, in front of us, or stay and stand near us—or in a distance where they feel they can be easily zapped by an air of mucus expelled from the mouth and nose in case somebody will sneeze or cough. A fellow Ilonggo, 57-year-old Mario Lena of Bankers Village in Jaro, Iloilo City, had experienced this recently.

But if they are the ones who happen to sneeze and cough, we don’t complain; we don’t make a mountain out of a molehill; we don’t stare at them like they’re descendants of Thanatos, the son of Nyx and the personification of death.

No coronavirus-tagging. No hateful glance. No malice. No problem.

 

 

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We all sneezed and coughed—people of all races—occasionally even before coronavirus became a worldwide terror, but nobody gave a hoot even inside the public transportations then.

It’s only when coronavirus started to kill in America that the level of enmity and prejudice toward Asians living in the U.S. developed  alarming uptick.

Not all sneezing actually can be associated with coronavirus.

It can have causes that aren’t due to underlying disease like cold exposure, bright lights, irritants such as pepper, or having an object stuck inside our nose.

We are thankful though that the New York Police Department (NYPD) Hate Crimes Task Force has started investigating a “racism” incident (that’s how the Metropolitan Transportation Authority described it) on N and L trains mostly in Brooklyn where an angry straphanger sprayed a male Asian passenger with air freshener after verbally attacking him.

A video on Twitter has detectives investigating a possible hate crime.

The video shows the altercation on the N train in Brooklyn, with the angry straphanger yelling at the man to move away from him—an apparent act of discrimination based on the man’s ethnicity.

 

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The Asian community has seen an increase in racist incidents against them since the outbreak of COVID-19, which began in China.

“I don’t want him under me!” the man is heard exclaiming in the expletive-laced video. “Tell him to move!”

The subject of his tirade was an Asian man who appeared to be minding his own business on the train, and said nothing back to the man during the rant, and didn’t move.

When the passenger doesn’t do what the enraged man told him to, the man sprays the air freshener Febreze in his direction for about 15 seconds.

Those who are motivated by racism and hostility must be reminded and educated that not all Asians living in the United States are infected with coronavirus (COVID-19).

It’s not a sin to sneeze and cough in public as long as we take precautionary measures, or as long as we cover our mouths with handkerchief or mask.

That Asian man attacked in the N train didn’t even sneeze and cough.

We Asians are being judged by the shape of our eyes.

 

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We read in a Time report by Cady Lang that “racial violence against Asian Americans often goes overlooked because of persistent stereotypes about the community.”

“There is a stereotype and an assumption that Asian Americans have class privilege, that they have high socioeconomic status and education, and that any discrimination doesn’t really happen or feel legitimate,” says Bianca Mabute-Louie, a racial justice educator. 

“There are these assumptions about ways that Asian Americans have ‘succeeded’ in this country.”

Mabute-Louie cited the pervasiveness of the model minority myth as a large contributing factor to the current climate. 

That false idea, constructed during the Civil Rights era to stymie racial justice movements, suggests that Asian Americans are more successful than other ethnic minorities because of hard work, education and inherently law-abiding natures.

“This contributes to erasing the very real interpersonal violence that we see happening in these videos, and that Asian Americans experience from the day-to-day, things that don’t get reported and the things that don’t get filmed,” she surmised.

 (The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

‘I wish all the Filipinos are here in America’

 “Access to humanitarian assistance and information are all the more important during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

—Morgan Ortagus

 

By Alex P. Vidal

 

ECSTATIC that the U.S. Senate has finally passed the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package, several Filipinos who are qualified to receive the largesse from Uncle Sam wished fellow Filipinos, especially their relatives, hit hard financially by pandemic in the Philippines, are in the United States.

“Sana lahat ng mga Pilipino ay nandito sa Amerika ngayon (I wish all the Filipinos are here in America today),” beamed long-time Woodside resident Lorenzo, who turned 65 on March 6, the day President Joseph Biden’s sweeping $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed a deeply divided Senate, as Democrats pushed through a pandemic aid plan that includes an extraordinary increase in safety net spending in the largest antipoverty effort in a generation.

“Sa Pilipinas gutom dahil sa pandemic, dito naman at least may stimulus pa tayo at kumikilos talaga ang gobierno ng U.S. para sa mga tao (Unlike in the Philippines hit by poverty amid the pandemic, at least we have a stimulus money here because the U.S. government is really doing something for the people).”

Based on the Social Security full retirement age (FRA), Lorenzo, born in Panit-an, Capiz but grew up in Caloocan City, was supposed to retire.

“Huwag na muna (Not at this time yet),” he sighed. “Mag avail muna ako ng stimulus. Hindi naman lahat ng taon may pandemic. Hindi ko na kasalanan kung qualified ako mag avail ng stimulus (I will avail first of the stimulus. The pandemic doesn’t occur in all these years, and it’s not my fault if I am qualified to avail it).”

 

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At the inception of Social Security in the 1930s, the FRA was 65.

Under legislation enacted in 1983, the FRA is increasing gradually from 65 to 67 over a 22-year period (for those reaching age 62 between 2000 and 2022), according to the Congressional Research Service.

“I’m half excited and half sad because my family (in Zambales) has nothing to get from the (Philippine) government, while here I am receiving Uncle Sam’s stimulus money,” said Remegio, 57, a civil engineer from Iba, Zambales’ capital, who resides in Jersey City, New Jersey.

The stimulus package, which still must pass the House before it heads to Mr. Biden’s desk to be signed into law this week, is the first major legislative initiative of his presidency. 

The measure sought at once to curtail the coronavirus pandemic, bolster the sluggish economy and protect the neediest people within it. Republicans voted unanimously against it and assailed it as “unnecessary and unaffordable.”

“Buti pa tayo meron pero ang mga walang papel hindi talaga makatikim (We’re lucky to avail it but not those who have no legal status),” stressed Jefferson, 48, a “professional gambler” from Bataan who resides in Woodhaven, Queens.

Greg, 62, who lost his job in a bar in Manhattan during the lockdown in April 2020, has been receiving a pandemic unemployment insurance both from the federal government and New York state.

“Uuwi sana ako (sa Pasay) nitong Mayo pero huwag na lang muna dahil na extend pala ang unemployment insurance at may darating pang $1,400 na stimulus check,” said Greg, who has been a resident of Elmhurst, Queens for 18 years.

 

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New York Times’ Emily Cochrane reported that the stimulus would inject vast amounts of federal resources into the economy, including one-time direct payments of up to $1,400 for hundreds of millions of Americans, jobless aid of $300 a week to last through the summer, money for distributing coronavirus vaccines and relief for states, cities, schools and small businesses struggling during the pandemic.

“Beyond the immediate aid, the bill, titled the American Rescue Plan, is estimated to cut poverty by a third this year and would plant the seeds for what Democrats hope will become an income guarantee for children,” she explained.

“It would potentially cut child poverty in half, through a generous expansion of tax credits for Americans with children—which Democrats hope to make permanent—increases in subsidies for child care, a broadening of eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, and an expansion of food stamps and rental assistance.”

The COVID relief bill includes more than $6 billion in federal funding for the MTA, New York City’s mass transportation system. 

The struggling transit system has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

ALEX P. VIDAL QUOTES

 

Alex P. Vidal Quotes

 

Alex P. Vidal Quotes