Fil-Am New Jersey official calls Trump 'a racist bully' over comments about PHL

Incensed by businessman Donald Trump's pronouncements against the Philippines, a Filipino-American official in New Jersey called the Republican presidential candidate a "racist bully" in a statement on Tuesday.
Jersey City Council President Rolando Lavarro, in a statement published on the Hudson Reporter, expressed his alarm at the "inanities" of Trump toward immigration and Filipinos.
"Now, he suggests we should ban immigration from the Philippines. There is simply no end to Trump’s inanities. As the son of Filipino immigrants, and on behalf of my elders, my manongs and manangs, I am appalled by the outrageous comments of this racist bully," Lavarro said.
The council president, elected in 2013, said Trump's speech discounted the contributions of Filipino-Americans in World War II to US sovereignty.
Lavarro added that the Republican candidates's remarks ignored the struggles of the families of veterans applying for US citizenship through the US parole program.
"Trump puts an exclamation point on his ignorance as he disregards over a century of relations between the U.S. and the Philippines, a country that has been and continues to be one of our nation’s closest allies in that region,” he said.
Lavarro said "Trump’s temperament and bigotry" did not befit a president as his recent comments were insults to the "nearly 18,000 Filipino Americans residing in Jersey City, 127,000 in New Jersey and over 3.4 million across the country."
Lavarro had previously blasted Trump for the businessman's claim that "thousands and thousands" of people cheered in Jersey City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Locally, Albay Rep. Joey Salceda filed a house resolution banning Trump from entering the Philippines for labeling Filipino immigrants coming from a terrorist nation.
Salceda's measure was mentioned in a report by the Los Angeles Times, which also noted that lawmakers from the United Kingdom and Germany had proposed similar bans earlier this year. —Rie Takumi/JST, GMA News

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