South Asian Immigrant Community Slow to Recover from Katrina

[Guest guest]

Katrina Wounds Slow to Heal for South Asian Community

 

India West News Report

Ashfaque Swapan

Sep 01, 2006

 

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A day before Hurricane Katrina hit last year, New Orleans

residents Quamrun Zinia, husband Riyad Ferdous and their

little kid got into a car. At 11:00 a.m., they set off. They just

packed stuff for their kid. Then they drove 400 miles to seek

shelter with Zinia's brother who lived in the Houston suburb

of Belleville. It was a category five warning, and evacuation

was mandatory.

 

She returned about 90 days later, and thankfully, suffered

virtually no material loss at all.

 

Zinia lived in the Metairie area of New Orleans, whose high

elevation kept it protected from the flood waters that

devastated this Louisiana metropolis after its levees broke.

Yet one year after Katrina, there is an emotional wound that

is still raw.

 

"After Katrina, the one thing that has not changed at all, is

that awful feeling of fear," the Bangladesh-born doctoral

student told India-West by phone in Bangla. "We are always

scared. Now that the (hurricane) season has started, there is

that constant fear that I will have to evacuate again."

 

Yet, as she is the first person to acknowledge, she is among

the lucky ones. "At least I have a brother to go to," she said

ruefully. "Imagine the situation of others in far more

precarious situations than mine."

 

Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the deadliest

hurricanes in the history of the United States, according to

the information resource Wikipedia. "It was the sixth-

strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-

strongest landfalling U.S. hurricane ever recorded,"

according to Wikipedia. "Katrina formed in late August

during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and devastated

much of the north-central Gulf Coast of the United States.

Most notable in media coverage were the catastrophic

effects on the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, and in coastal

Mississippi. Katrina's sheer size devastated the Gulf Coast

over 100 miles (160 km) away from its center."

 

South Asians also suffered considerable loss, but the nature

of the loss varied. While professionals often came out

unscathed in the longer term, because federal assistance was

on hand after they had survived the initial onslaught,

students faced greater challenges, and undocumented

workers faced terrible hardships, hit as they were by the

double-whammy of natural disaster and ineligibility to

government assistance, activists told India-West.

 

The vast majority of Indian American motel owners are still

struggling to open their motels, Anil Patel, gulf director of

the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, told India-

West from Jackson, Miss. in a phone conversation.

 

He said there were 19 Indian American-owned hotels in

Biloxi. Miss., and Shreveport, La. In New Orleans, Indian

Americans owned 20 hotels. "Out of these only five are

open, rest are not open yet," he said.

 

Zinia said while many people she knew got assistance from

the much maligned Federal Emergency Management

Agency, it was heartbreaking to see the suffering of people,

particularly students, who weren't immigrants, because the

federal assistance spigot completely dried up for them.

 

"My daughter is an American citizen, and we got a $,2000

voucher," she said. "Next door to me is a student family just

like us, they have a four-year-old kid, the kid was born in

Bangladesh, and they didn't get it. Some got it, but had to

return it.

 

"Personally I felt very bad about this. I know a student

family who have a green card, their home was in knee-level

water and they got $36,000 for the loss of the place,

furniture. In another house, another family-I feel so terribly

sorry for them-they have two kids, they lost everything too,

they got nothing. FEMA rejected their application, because

they weren't immigrants."

 

Partha Banerjee, executive director of the Newark, N.J.-

based Immigration Policy Network, got involved with South

Asian immigrant issues immediately after Katrina. He said

the post-disaster circumstances of Katrina was also a golden

opportunity lost by immigrant rights activists and the South

Asian community.

 

"This was a great opportunity to show the media and the

establishment, that the traditionally underprivileged part of

society, particularly African Americans, and immigrants

face the same problems and challenges. But we blew it,

because we immigrants don't want to work with African

Americans."

 

He said the South Asian experience in the aftermath of

Katrina depended on where they belonged in the socio-

economic ladder.

 

"Many South Asians are students, teachers; many were

ready," he said. "The losses were great, but they later got

aid. Students were relocated. So after they had weathered

the initial hit, they got back on their feet. Those who work,

they moved elsewhere. Many moved to Houston. Even in

New Jersey and New York I know people who moved

permanently."

 

Zinia echoed Banerjee's views. For the past six years she

has been organizing a Pahela Baisakh celebration, bringing

together West Bengal and Bangladeshi Bangla-speakers

from three states: Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. She

said she was really surprised when she went to the Durga

Puja celebrations. "The event had half the number of

people," she said.

 

"They have arranged for jobs and moved out of state."

 

Students faced an added layer of hassles. "Many people

don't know that foreign students can only go to the specific

college referred to in their I-20 forms," Banerjee said.

"Since their academic program was suspended, they had to

go through a lot of hassles." Here again, what one faced

depended upon where one was. Mainstream students or

privileged students were easily relocated, Banerjee said,

while poor and immigrant students did not get that

assistance. "These poor students don't have much money to

begin with, some lost everything," he rued to India-West.

"They had to work overtime to take care of this extra

hurdle."

 

Even for the affluent, there was no telling how one would be

affected. "Some have paid off their homes and they didn't

take flood insurance," said Zinia. "Now water entered up to

roof level, and the entire house was ruined. Since they had

no flood insurance, they got nothing. I know a

multimillionaire who is now penniless.

 

"On the other hand, I know someone who had just brought a

house. He had flood insurance and now he has got so much

money he is thinking about getting into the real estate

business. It's all very strange."

 

For Banerjee, though, the biggest disappointment was that

even a disaster like Katrina could not bring South Asians

out of their ethnic cocoons.

 

"The saddest part is that local people were unable to build

immigrant solidarity," he laments.

 

Zinia agrees. "They are all in their ethnic ghettoes, nothing

has changed," she said. "But maybe this is American

culture. I have lived in apartment complexes where a person

dies in one apartment and people next door have no idea."