PERSPECTIVES & CASE STUDY

PERSPECTIVE:
United Honduran Committee of Houston

     Prior to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was home to more than 100,000 Hondurans, many of whom had been granted temporary protected status after Hurricane Mitch ripped through Central America in 1998. Even before Katrina struck, Honduran and other Latino evacuees began crowding into El Coquito, a restaurant in southwest Houston. El Coquito is owned by Christina Flores, who is also the president of the United Honduran Committee of Houston.

     With businesses to keep afloat and few outside resources, Christina and other members of Houston’s Honduran community did everything they could to provide the evacuees with food, clothing, and other necessities while trying to connect them with larger relief providers. In the first two weeks, Christina recorded more than 1,000 names at El Coquito. As soon as the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs (MOIRA), led by Benito Juarez, heard what was happening, it distributed Spanish-language flyers at the restaurant, providing information about assistance available to evacuees, and sent Spanish speaking caseworkers. Soon afterward, MOIRA connected El Coquito with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC). Joined by a few local churches, MCC provided food, care packages, and Wal-Mart cards to the evacuees. Most importantly, transportation was provided from El Coquito to the main disaster recovery center and shelters, which were all relatively distant.

     Despite this assistance, Hondurans encountered serious difficulties in obtaining the assistance they needed. Due to the lack of Spanish-speaking interpreters at most disaster recovery centers, more than one hundred families sent by Christina were turned away. Most returned to El Coquito with no idea why they had been rejected.  [Back to article]
 

PERSPECTIVE:
José Velázquez, Ph.D.,
Executive Director, Latino Memphis

     During the first two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, there were essentially no Latinos staying in shelters in Tennessee. Shortly after, however, significant numbers of immigrant survivors began arriving at the offices of Latino Memphis. These immigrants, who were afraid to seek help from FEMA or the Red Cross, reported that many Latinos had not known that they were supposed to evacuate or how to do so, and that many people remained behind.

     Three weeks after Katrina, Executive Director José Velázquez and other Latino Memphis staff went to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, to see how they could be of assistance. Amid the devastation, they found a damaged apartment complex where Latino families remained. As they approached the complex, several residents ran into the apartments and locked the doors, fearing that the Latino Memphis staff might be immigration enforcement officers. The residents later explained to the Latino Memphis staff that they wanted to leave the area but did not have transportation and were afraid to approach the FEMA disaster recovery center or the Red Cross relief center, both of which were less than a hundred meters away.

     Despite Latino Memphis’s attempts to alleviate their fears, most of the Latinos in the complex would not budge. This situation was exacerbated by the attitude at the local Red Cross relief center, which did not employ Spanish interpreters, refused offers from volunteer interpreters, and turned away at least two families because they did not bring Spanish interpreters with them.  [Back to article]
 

The American Red Cross’s statement of impartiality (2005), reiterating principles of the International Red Cross movement, states, in relevant part:

Red Cross workers will not question clients about their citizenship status; nor will they request birth certificates, immigration papers, passports, social security cards, or similar documents that could be interpreted as being used to identify the nationality or immigration status of persons seeking Red Cross assistance. If clients reveal their citizenship status or this information becomes available from some other sources, this information is not recorded on any Red Cross document. Only such documents necessary to identify the individual or family as living in the disaster-affected area are required for Red Cross assistance.  [Back to article]

PERSPECTIVE
Encourager Church, Houston

The Encourager Church in Houston operated as an independent shelter and recovery center for Katrina evacuees. Sarah Williamson, the facilities manager, recounted this story:

We had one Vietnamese lady, it was just her and her husband...they didn’t have any children, and she did not speak or understand any English. He would get up early in the morning to try to find work and would leave her here. We were trying to help her, ask her some questions, not really knowing that she didn’t understand us...and it scared her. She had just come from Vietnam and only been in New Orleans for three months when this happened to them, and they had lost everything and had to come over here. It almost seemed like she thought we were trying to hurt her. Then we finally had someone come in who could interpret for her and let her know that we were here to help her and keep her from being alone. That really calmed her down and, from then on, she was comfortable here.  [Back to article]

CASE STUDY
New York After 9/11

     In the aftermath of 9/11, policymakers and public officials recognized the critical importance of protecting the health and safety of New York City residents and understood that access to health care for those who needed it most was impaired by a host of obstacles: the displacement of many New Yorkers from their homes and places of employment; severe disruption of transportation and telecommunication; and loss of communication lines needed to access the normal Medicaid computer management system.

     Working in partnership with the federal government, the Department of Health quickly implemented Disaster Relief Medicaid, a time-limited program aimed at meeting the health needs of low-income New Yorkers in a time of crisis. Using a “presumptive eligibility” approach by which a preliminary determination of eligibility is simply based on the applicants’ own declaration of need, DRM provided four months of Medicaid benefits to individuals who completed a simplified, one-page application. The application made no inquiries regarding immigration status but required applicants to provide a Social Security number.*  [Back to article]

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* See Disaster Relief Medicaid Evaluation Project (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, Dec. 2005), 11, www.health.state.ny.us/health_care/medicaid/related/docs/drm_report.pdf: “The application was simplified in recognition of the inability to use the normal computer systems, the difficulties people might have in obtaining documents from employers and institutions following the disaster, the short-term nature of the program, and the need to assist affected individuals quickly. Eligibility was determined manually and records transferred to the State Medicaid offices in Albany for computer entry.”