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Prayer Corner
Many of our Members have asked for prayers from their AOS Family. Please keep the following in prayer:
Fr. Joseph Muha - Cruise Ship Priest who is having major heart surgery on Oct. 11
Fr. Lawrence Burke - Cruise Ship Priest who suffered a stroke this weekend.
Len Falkenthal, brother of Fr. Tom Falkenthal, who had a brain cancer, and passed away last week.
Fr. Laurence Hansen - Cruise Ship Priest, who is recuperating from a bad fall.
The Father of Lesley Warrick, (Director of Seafarers' House in Port Everglades). Lesley's Father passed away last week.
Fr. Vicente Jazmines - Cruise Ship Priest who is battling Prostrate Cancer
Mr. Joseph Patronella - Volunteer with the Port Arthur International Seafarers' Center
Fr. Patrick Collins - Cruise Ship Priest who has a cyst on the sciatic nerve on his leg.
For our Gulf Fishers, Shrimpers, Crabbers and Oystermen, that God will bless them with a fruitful harvest this year.
For all those in pirate infested waters that God will protect them.
For those who have fallen into piracy, that they will find better, honest ways of sustaining their families, and turn away from a life of crime.
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Join AOS USA Today!
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 Just When You Thought it Couldn't Get Better!
Dear Members:
It has been such a great week. After struggling for so long to get seafarers the statutory right to shore leave, and to pass through facilities regulated by the Maritime Transportation Security Act, the US Congress, in the wee hours of the morning, agreed to the conference bill, and sent the 2010 Coast Guard Authorization Act to President Obama's desk for his signature.
When I didn't think it could get better, I got a message from our friend Rajesh Joshi of Lloyd's List that a major policy shift had come forth from Customs and Border Protection. Mariners, who are forced to overstay their 29-day D-1 visa limit, can now request a change in their status before their 29-days run out. This will be a great relief to mariners who have to stay in the US for months because of a major mechanical failure, or in instances where mariners have been abandoned by the owners, and have to wait months for their back pay and repatriation. In addition, there may be greater shown to seafarers without D-1 visas to access shore leave, if their vessel was diverted to the US. See Rajesh's full story below.
Finally, lets all sing happy 90th birthday to the Apostleship of the Sea. On October 4, 1920, Brother Daniel Shields S.J., together with Arthur Gannon and Peter F. Anson, organized the Apostleship of the Sea in Glasgow, Scotland, and submitted the framework and constitutions to the Holy See for formal approval. AOS USA is delighted to reprint theMessage for the 90th Anniversary of the Foundation of the Apostleship of the Sea. As you attend Mass this weekend, please pray a special prayer for the continued growth and success of our apostolate.
Our Lady Star of the Sea, Pray for Us! Fr. Sinclair
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Obama Set to Sign New Coast Guard Bill
By: Rajesh Joshi
Courtesy Lloyd's List
Monday 4 October 2010
PRESIDENT Barack Obama shortly is expected to sign into law the first US Coast Guard Authorisation Act since 2006, making available some $10.7bn for the federal agency for fiscal year 2010-2011 that began on October 1.
Seafarers have benefited in certain provisions, especially one that requires shoreside facilities and terminals to allow shore access to visiting mariners at no cost to these individuals.
The Bill also is a landmark for the USCG as it formalises its desire to modernise its assets and reorganise its structure, which the agency has been voicing since at least 2007.
However, the Authorisation Act would not become effective until a separate appropriations Bill is passed to disburse the money. The USCG until then would continue to be funded on an ad hoc basis at the old level.
It remains unclear if this appropriations Bill would be passed in the lame-duck session between November and January, or this would have to wait for the newly elected Congress after January.
Nonetheless, subject to Mr Obama's signature in the week ahead, the Act appears poised to become the first, and possibly only, maritime-related statute to emerge through the Capitol Hill machinery in the dying days of the outgoing Congress.
The USCG Authorisation Act awaiting Mr Obama's pen is a classic "Christmas tree", a Capitol Hill tradition where a raft of line items totally unrelated to the USCG's funding requirements have festooned the final version.
A provision on shore leave is one such item to have made it into the final Bill. It requires each facility to "provide a system for seamen assigned to a vessel at that facility, pilots, and representatives of seamen's welfare and labour organisations to board and depart the vessel through the facility in a timely manner at no cost to the individual".
This issue has been hanging fire especially at private terminals in the US Gulf and along the Mississippi River, which charged a fee for allowing mariners, US as well as foreign visa-holders, to pass through their premises to leave port.
Another provision that made it into the final cut is one that imposes a cap on penalty wage claims that seafarers alleging wage arrears can be awarded, and sets a time bar for such lawsuits to be brought. This clause is designed to protect the cruise industry from unwarranted actions.
Father Sinclair Oubre, diocesan director for the Apostleship of the Sea of the USA, said: "This is great news for AoS USA, which has lobbied hard for five years to get these sections passed.
"On the shore leave aspect, we have seen ridiculous cases where seafarers who lived in the local town could not go home because of the limited time the gate would be open, or mariners having to go through back doors or down roads controlled by neighbouring facilities to get ashore. The Bill would solve such problems, and have a tremendous effect on US and foreign mariners."
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US Customs Makes Landmark Pledge to Lightering Crew: Agency says it will mitigate the so-called 29 day rule on lightering vessels
By: Rajesh Joshi
Courtesy Lloyd's List
A SENIOR immigration officer in the US has made a landmark pledge to the shipping industry that crew members on lightering ships and those in extraordinary circumstances would be given fair treatment in US port visits on shore access and visa issues.
Cheryl Peters, US Customs and Border Protection programme manager for admissibility requirements and migration control, said the agency would use all the discretion at its disposal to mitigate the so-called 29-day rule on lightering vessels.
This requirement of US law requires even valid visa-holding seafarers to restrict their stay in the US to 29 days on each individual visit. This has caused lightering shipowners financial, as well as logistical problems.
Ms Peters told Lloyd's List on the sidelines of the Association of Ship Brokers & Agents conference in Miami that a memorandum was sent out to all CBP officers in July, asking them to give special consideration to crew members who immediately identify themselves as lightering crew upon first arrival in the US, whether at an airport or by sea.
These inspectors are then supposed to grant the crew an on-the-spot parole, which precludes them from deportation or other enforcement under the 29-day rule.
Although the final authority on whether to grant such paroles rests with the individual CBP officer and the individual seafarer's case, Ms Peters said there had been almost no complaints about the initiative since it was introduced.
In cases not specific to lightering ships where unexpected circumstances cause foreign ships with valid US visa-holding crews to remain in US waters beyond 29 days at a time, Ms Peters exhorted shipowners to notify CBP before the 29th day is over, instead of after the 30th day has begun.
This way CBP has many more options in terms of granting case-by-case paroles. If owners waited until after the 29-day limit was over, CBP had little leeway other than enforcement, she stressed.
A senior ship's agent said this statement was a huge change from a "poster child" situation in the US Gulf last year, when unexpected repairs caused a foreign ship to remain in the US for five and a half months. In this case, even valid visa-holding crew members were unable to leave the ship for the entire duration, the agent said.
Separately, Ms Peters said ships that are diverted to the US at short notice, typically when their cargoes are purchased mid-voyage by US entities, should also notify CBP in advance specifically about the visa situation of their crews, even if the expected stay would not exceed 29 days.
If this is done, CBP has several options other than the mandatory refusal to land on US territory for non-visa holders. Depending on the case, CBP could grant paroles or waivers to crew members in such special cases, Ms Peters said.
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Message for the 90th Anniversary of the Foundation
of the Apostleship of the Sea (AOS)
Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio
President
Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People
The beginning
Already in the nineteen century there were several Church-related organizations offering scattered assistance to seafarers. The Society of Saint Vincent de Paul opened clubs for Catholic seafarers in Dublin, London, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Quebec and Sydney. On his part, Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini of Piacenza (Italy), was placing chaplains in the ports of Genoa and New York, and assigned his missionaries on board the vessels accompanying the thousands of European migrants seeking a better future in North and South America.
It was only in 1890 that the movement of the Apostleship of Prayer, through a series of articles published in their magazine, the Messenger of the Sacred Heart, invited its members to pray for Catholic seafarers and organized the sending of magazines and books to them. Unfortunately, after a few years, very little was left of these activities.
Shortly after the Great World War some members of the Apostleship of Prayer brought forward the idea of enrolling the seafarers themselves into the Apostolate and began visiting vessels in English ports and contacting seafarers.
The Apostleship of the Sea (AOS)
Finally, on 4th October 1920, a small group of lay people (Mr. Peter F. Anson, a convert from the Anglican Church, Mr. Arthur Gannon and Bro. Daniel Shields S.J.,) gathered in Glasgow and decided to unify these efforts among seafarers in a single work. Getting inspiration from the movement of the Apostleship of Prayer, they called it Apostleship of the Sea (AOS). On the same occasion, Peter F. Anson advanced the idea that became the seed for the development of AOS. Besides the religious aspect, he introduced the dimension of assistance to the seafarers. This area became the purpose of AOS and later was spelled out in the first Constitution: "to promote the spiritual, moral and social development of seafarers" .
READ MORE
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Read & View More about the Oil Spill
Workboat Magazine held a free Webinar yesterday, to discuss the Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill on Boat Builders and Vessel Owners/Operators. The audio file can be listened to here:
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