Why Filipinos need to focus on Georgia run-off

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“Voter fraud is almost non-existent. People don’t just show up on election day, trying to impersonate other people.”—Nina Turner

 

SOME Filipinos with relatives and friends intending to avail of the Biden-Harris incoming administration’s “comprehensive immigration reforms” are hoping—and, perhaps, praying—that Jon Ossoff, and Rev. Raphael Warnock will win the Georgia senate race run-off election on January 5.

Both Ossoff and Warnock are Democratic challengers respectively against incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.

Republicans currently are in control of the U.S. Senate, 50-48, after the November 3 election.

A win by Ossoff and Warnock will make it 50-50.

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who will sit as the Senate President and Presiding Officer, can break any deadlock in a crucial legislative impasse.

“Sana sila (Ossoff and Warnock) na ang manalo para tuloy-tuloy at walang hadlang ang mga legislative agenda ni (President-elect Joseph) Biden,“ quipped Erlinda, 66, a gynecologist in Cagayan de Oro City, who is now a caregiver in New Haven, Connecticut.

Erlinda’s younger sister, Rhodora, 58, a retired teacher, is looking forward to avail of Mr. Biden’s immigration reforms, one of the centerpiece programs of his candidacy in the recent U.S. Presidential Election.

Rhodora, now a nanny in Bridgeport, Connecticut, left her three children in Cagayan de Oro City in 2005 and overstayed her tourist visa while in Burbank, California.

 

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Rhodora has been “religiously paying her taxes,” Erlinda said even if her younger sister did not have a social security number (SSN).

As a taxpayer, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Rhodora with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), a tax processing number only available for certain nonresident and resident aliens, their spouses, and dependents who cannot get an SSN.

It is a 9-digit number, beginning with the number “9”, formatted like an SSN (NNN-NN-NNNN).

ITIN can be used along with an unexpired passport to open a bank account.

Erlinda, a U.S. citizen, wants Rhodora to avail of the Biden administration’s “amnesty” and vowed to help pay for her sister’s legal fees.

Jason, 46, a nursing assistant at Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall, said Rebecca, 44, his friend and townmate in Dumaguete City in the Philippines, also doesn’t have legal status but has been working as a food server in a Filipino restaurant in Hackensack, New Jersey.

“I want to help her. She hasn’t seen her only son in Negros for almost 15 years now. We are also looking forward to a Democrats victory in Georgia so that Biden’s immigration reform agenda will pass smoothly,” said Jason, an active organizer of an LGBT organization in Passaic, New Jersey.

 

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Armando, 54, of Himamaylan City, Negros Occidental, has been working “under the table” as a private caregiver and in various home care facilities in Lake Forest, California since 2008.

A former member of Lion’s Club, he toured the U.S. in 2008 and did not go back to the Philippines.

Armando worked as a chef in a bakeshop in Brooklyn as of February 2020, but lost the job during the lockdown caused by the pandemic.

“I want to go home before I reach 60,” he vowed. “I hope Biden can help me (with my immigration papers).”

Republicans and Democrats are searching the state of Georgia for new voters, although CBS News exit polling of the general election suggests neither party has much room to grow outside of their bases before the January runoffs.

Time is short, with little over two weeks before early voting begins.

One race pits Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler against Democrat Warnock and the other has Republican David Perdue defending his seat against Ossoff.

 

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The runoff elections will determine which party has a majority in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats need to win both seats to split control of the chamber 50-50. The vice president (Democrat Kamala Harris beginning in January 2021) casts tie-breaking votes in the Senate.

Republicans only need to win one seat to maintain their majority.

National Republicans frame the fight over Senate control as a fight against socialism in America.

Democrats say the incoming Biden administration needs a Democratic Senate majority to make progress on immigration, healthcare and pandemic recovery.

Georgia’s last Democratic senator, Zell Miller, left office in 2005. Republicans have had a trifecta in the state—holding the governor’s office and controlling both chambers of the state legislature—since 2004.

And Republicans have had a triplex—holding the offices of governor, attorney general, and secretary of state—since 2011.

Georgia’s legislature passed a law in the 1960s requiring runoffs for general elections in which no candidate receives a majority of the vote.

The top two finishers in the general election advance to the runoff. Runoff elections are required for all congressional, state executive, and state legislative elections in which a candidate does not receive a majority in the general election.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, is a former editor of two dailies in Iloilo, Philippines)