Filipino-Americans in the United States are divided over the impeachment of US President Donald Trump.
Some joined the rallies in Los Angeles and New York, supporting the US House of Representatives’ impeachment of Trump for his dealings with Ukraine.
However, there are Filipinos who support the Republican Party too and were dismayed over the US House inquiry from the beginning.
Raymond Partolan, an undocumented Filipino-American paralegal working in Atlanta, Georgia, welcomed the historic vote of the US Lower Chamber.
“I firmly believe that today’s impeachment sends a message to the American people that we will not stand for the abuse of the powers of our nation’s highest office. We will not stand for corruption at the highest levels. And we will not stand for the continued degradation of the values on which our country was founded upon,” Partolon said in a statement released to The Filipino Times.
Partolan is one of the 3,880 recipients of the program initiated by the Obama administration called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). They are foreigners who migrated to the United States as children and are now grown-ups, Americanized in thinking and way of living but still considered illegal or undocumented by US authorities.
Born in Quezon City, Partolan has moved to the US at the age of one.
But when Trump took office in 2017, he rescinded the Executive Order issued by then US President Barack Obama, making these DACA recipients eligible for deportation. DACA recipients questioned Trump’s withdrawal of DACA program before the US Supreme .
Partolan thinks the road to convicting and removing Trump “is bumpy and will be an uphill climb” since the US Senate which will try the President is controlled by his own Republican Party.
Nonetheless, he said today’s impeachment sent out “clear message” that America will always be a “country of the people, by the people and for the people,’ and that the President will be held accountable for his actions.
In Los Angeles, hundreds rally in front of the city hall, supporting the impeachment move on Trump. Some Filipinos joined the crowd.
“He’s committed a lot of wrongdoing that is immoral and inhumane… There is some kind of justice from above,” Gilda Elano-Teal said in an interview with ABS-CBN’s Balitang America.
Filipino Republicans in southern California, meanwhile, lashed on the Democrats for orchestrating the impeachment move which they suspect is meant to derail his re-election bid.
“He’s definitely not going to get impeached in the Senate. I think it’s just a way for the Democrats to try to damage President Trump for the reelection,” said Edwin Duterte, a former Republican Congressional Candidate, as quoted by ABS-CBN’s Balitang America.
Fil-am Brunswick, Ohio Mayor Ron Falconi is one of the few Fil-Am official who is Republican and once served at the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders under the Trump administration.
“Of course it feels very concerning it feels like the Democrats, who tried to defeat him in 2016 in the election and this is basically the result of their non-winning,” said Falconi. “They said even before he was inaugurated they wanted to impeach him and we’re opposed to him. So that’s what’s going on here, it’s not really news, because it seems they’re just doing what they said they’re doing. It’s very partisan and I think it’s going to backfire against them in 2020.”
