CHAPTER 3

Black Immigrants and Disaster Inequality

I’ve been ordained forty-six years, and I have been here for the last twelve years. So, I’ve gotten to know the community, and it’s a wonderful community to be in and it’s a real mixed community. We have a Haitian community, we have all the Caribbean community, we have, um, people from the African, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Liberian, all over. So, it’s a real mixed community. It’s been a joy being here with them. But right now, there is uh—I would say three hundred or four hundred homes that have been severely damaged, I mean I think that’s probably more than that. But I don’t even know about it, you know.

—Father Francis, Catholic priest, Holiness Church

While many immigrant adaptation studies focus on the segmented experiences of immigrants during routine periods, in areas such as employment and education, in this chapter I focus on the segmented experiences of immigrants during a period of urban disaster. I illustrate how the segmentation that occurs as part of the migration experience further intersects with experiencing a disaster. The chapter also extends the conversation about segmented incorporation into the spatial and housing structures of an urban community. This intersection of migration and disaster presents distinct types of challenges to various classes of Canarsie’s Black immigrants.

Legal Segmentation of Immigrants

New York City is a well-known diasporic capital for Caribbean immigrants, where they are the largest immigrant group (Passel and Clark 1999; Foner 2005; Heron 2001). In 2005, 42 percent of U.S. Black immigrants from the Caribbean resided in New York (Kent 2007). Historically, New York has been the “principal gateway for immigrants entering the United States,” making New York City one of the most diverse U.S. cities (Passel and Clark 1999). For this reason, classic works in urban sociology and immigrant adaptation such as Nathan Glazer and Patrick Moynihan’s Beyond the Melting Pot (1970) have focused on New York as a site to study the adaptation experiences of new immigrants. Many Caribbean immigrants settle into various urban communities in New York City (Foner 2005; Heron 2001; Kasinitz 2008; Model 2008; Waters 1999).

Like many other immigrant groups, Caribbean immigrants undergo socioeconomic incorporation into the United States. However, many studies on Caribbean immigrants in the United States tend to exclusively focus on those immigrants who have maintained legal status, have moderate to high skills, and have gained employment in the formal sector of the economy (Kasinitz, Mollenkopf, and Waters 2004; Kasinitz 2008; Model 2008; Waters 1999). Many Caribbean immigrants migrate to the United States as nurses and teachers on H1B1 visas, making the socioeconomic adaptation of these groups of high-skilled immigrants a smoother process than for their counterparts who do not have these opportunities. However, most Caribbean migration occurs through family sponsorship. In these cases, migrating family members have a variety of skill and educational levels, but there is no guarantee of a job upon entry.

Like other immigrant groups, there are also Caribbean immigrants lacking legal status. The primary mode of entry into the United States for Caribbean immigrants is inspection via airports, where they are permitted entry upon presenting a visa (Foner 2000). This means that many Caribbean immigrants lacking legal status came in through an inspected port of entry but overstayed their allotted time in the United States. Some 33 to 50 percent of persons lacking legal status in the United States are persons who legally entered through inspected ports and over-stayed (Pew Hispanic Center 2006; Passel and Cohn 2011; Warren 2003). However, White immigrants from Europe, Ireland, and Canada also contribute to the pool of persons who overstayed their visas in the United States. Approximately 30 percent of New Yorkers who lack legal status are from the Caribbean (Passel and Clark 1999).

Among Caribbean immigrants who lack legal status, those from Haiti are more likely to have entered the United States via boats through Miami, outside these inspected ports, precluding these immigrants from benefiting from even a temporary period of legal status. Furthermore, immigrants who enter the United States without inspection are excluded from provisions in immigration law that allow immigrants to “adjust” to legal status. By contrast, this opportunity is available to immigrants overstaying their visas. Immigrants lacking legal status participate in the informal economy, where women become babysitters, nannies, and housekeepers in White middle-class and affluent city and suburban households. Men go into trades such as carpentry, construction, and car repair.

This segmentation of the legal incorporation of immigrants into the United States (Portes and Rumbaut 2006) creates a corollary segmentation of the socioeconomic opportunities of immigrants in other realms. The precarious labor market position of many working-class immigrants coupled with limitations to governmental social support services makes them socially vulnerable to disasters, reflected in Canarsie’s level of social vulnerability (figure 7). This reality is even more consequential among those immigrants who lack legal status and do not qualify for federal disaster support. Immigrant churches become a crucial source of social capital to help immigrants adapt to their unfamiliar environment.

Margarita A. Mooney (2009), in her book Faith Makes Us Live, examines the adaptation experiences of Catholic Haitian immigrants in the UK, Canada, and the United States. She finds that immigrant churches are committed to immigrants’ adaptation and are particularly responsive to the hardships of immigrants lacking legal status. Churches also increase opportunities for networking, social support, and friendships for members (Krause 2008), all of which are crucial for improving their life chances.

Historicizing Race in Canarsie

Canarsie is a neighborhood in the southeastern portion of Brooklyn in New York City (see figure 8). Canarsie neighbors East New York, Brownsville, East Flatbush, Flatlands, Mill Basin, and Bergen Beach. Canarsie has a combined population of 97,137 residents as of 2010. Canarsie was not always the Black and immigrant enclave that it is today. The first West Indians to settle in Canarsie were seamen from Barbados, Jamaica, and the Bahamas who abandoned their ships in the early 1900s. These immigrants lived in squalid conditions alongside economically deprived Irish and Italians, as well as African Americans who had migrated from the South as part of the Great Migration (Brooklyn Public Library 2016).

These early Canarsie residents lived near Jamaica Bay and south of Colored Colony along Avenue J and K (Brooklyn Public Library 2016). The government razed their community and replaced it with a public housing complex under the 1950s “urban renewal” slum policy (Rieder 1985). However, this community did not become a Caribbean enclave until the 1965 Hart-Celler immigration law which precipitated a large influx of immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa.

A snapshot of this neighborhood’s immigrants in the 1960s would reveal Italians and Jews strolling the streets, instead of today’s Jamaicans, Haitians, and other Caribbean and African immigrants (Rieder 1985). A key historical moment that marked the switch from yesterday’s White ethnic enclave to this majority Black neighborhood is the violent opposition of Jews and Italians to the integration of Puerto Ricans and Black people into Canarsie (Rieder 1985). In 1972, when the school board ordered Canarsie to enroll a few dozen Black children into their schools, ten thousand White students boycotted school for a week (Rieder 1985).

Up to the 1980s and 1990s, Canarsie was still majority Italian and Jewish. However, from the 1990s, Jews and Italians eager to flee their changing neighborhood opened up the private housing markets for non-White residents (Rieder 1985). West Indian immigrants from the Caribbean, where homeownership is the hallmark of success, seized the opportunity for homeownership (Scott 2001). While many thought they were buying into integrated neighborhoods, they quickly realized that they were part of this ecological “succession” induced by White flight. By 2000, the Caribbean population had grown to six times its size ten years earlier (Scott 2001) (see figure 9).

Today, the majority Black Caribbean population in Canarsie, as in many other Brooklyn neighborhoods, enjoys tremendous political capital, having elected representatives at every level of government, including U.S. senator Yvette Clarke. The community has tremendous community social capital through its many civic associations (Scott 2001). (See table 2 for a community profile of Canarsie.)

Class and Space Segmentation

Canarsie has a Caribbean and Black diasporic community made up of multigenerational immigrant families. This means that while Canarsie is racially homogeneous, there is a lot of heterogeneity on the axis of class stemming from a refraction of migrant incorporation into the United States. During Sandy, many of these immigrants of color had been concentrated in areas that were initially placed in Evacuation Zone B (see figure 10) but that became inundated with flood water, leading to being rezoned as Zone A. This means that they were at elevated risk of experiencing flooding.

TABLE 2. Community profile of Canarsie

The migration experience differentially affords opportunities and constraints for socioeconomic mobility. Migration experience and immigration status create a situation where immigrants, despite living in the same community, are differentially connected and integrated into the labor and housing markets of urban centers. As was evident in Canarsie, the differential incorporation into the socioeconomic space was reflected spatially in the urban environment as well. Different classes of immigrants were also reflected in the housing types and tenure as well as proximity to flood lines, which led to differentiated disaster experiences among this Black immigrant population.

Many of Canarsie’s immigrant homeowner class with whom I spoke owned two-story, multi-family homes with basements and tended to be more established immigrants who migrated between twenty and thirty years prior to Sandy, when these homes were affordable for working-class immigrants. These immigrants had acquired legal permanent residency or naturalized citizenship status. More established immigrants were more likely to have had a chance to create large extended families in the United States. Many Caribbean families tended to live in the same household, community, or surrounding communities in Brooklyn. The longer their tenure in the United States, the more likely these immigrants had adult children who had legal status and had attained educational opportunities and more stable jobs in the formal U.S. labor market. This means that established immigrants with large families and legal status enjoyed the highest familial, economic, and social capital possible. Additionally, families who had lived the longest in Canarsie had the best opportunity to benefit from neighborhood capital in the form of involvement in party politics, neighborhood clubs, and churches, as well as interpersonal social capital through relationships with neighbors, coworkers, and members of their faith communities.

At the opposite end of the spectrum of physical, financial, political, and social capital were apartment renters and basement renters, who were usually those who migrated more recently and in some cases lacked legal status. Some immigrants and second-generation residents were young to middle-aged and had not attained desired educational and occupational goals. They lived alone or far away from extended family. Those with families were more likely to comprise younger heads of household with younger children who rely on, rather than provide for, the financial and social capital of their parents. Renters, differentially positioned than homeowners, had more precarious attachment to their urban communities. Basement renters had only loose connections to the community, had low-wage service jobs, and were self-employed, seasonally employed, or unemployed.

Immigrant Family Multigenerational Living

This Black immigrant community experienced unique challenges resulting from basement flooding. Many of these Caribbean Americans’ homes housed intergenerational families, where the basements were very often living spaces for extended family members, friends, and nonfamilial renters. The lack of designation of Canarsie as a flood zone made it quite surprising that Canarsie residents would contend with up to nine feet of flooding of their basements. At least one building I observed even had a watermark up to the halfway point of a first-floor window. The multigenerational living arrangement of many immigrant families produced a particular nuance in the disaster experience for adult children of homeowners who occupied their parents’ basement. For example, Carol, a middle-class Canarsie Sandy survivor, lived with her husband and four-year-old daughter in her mother’s home. While standing on her driveway, I asked Carol about her losses:

SM: What kinds of things did you lose?”

CAROL: We had a very nice clothes closet downstairs made of nice wood, very expensive. Took our time and everything. That’s gone. We saved the washer and dryer—that’s a good thing. A couch, TV stand, TV, another TV. All the heavy things. The toy chest.

SM: That was your living area?

CAROL: It’s like a rec room. My exercise bike. Mattress. It’s like a guest area plus the refrigerator, stove, it’s just—

SM: Wait, you had your kitchen on this floor as well?

CAROL: Yeah, this is my main kitchen but, in the summertime, when we were barbecuing with the sink and stuff you wash out and everything downstairs because I don’t let people go on this floor.

Carol’s family shared the first floor with her mom, but she and her nuclear family also used the basement for laundry and recreational purposes. These kinds of living arrangements resulted in significant losses for second-generation immigrant adult children who had acquired enough to furnish their living spaces but had not attained sufficient upward mobility to purchase their own homes. The flooding eroded whatever gains these adult children may have made toward their own socioeconomic mobility. However, typically these young families’ displacement would only be in the form of having to move to a higher floor of the same building structure.

I asked Ferdinand, the FEMA site manager at the Canarsie disaster response center, how FEMA handled cases like Carol’s where the basement held “extra” electronic devices, furniture, and appliances. Ferdinand emphatically stated:

They will not cover it, because it’s extra. Because with FEMA, really what we do is try to put you in a safe, sound, and functional position—if you have like ten TVs, you only need one. But if you have a child that is going to school and they have a laptop, and it’s for school, they can write a letter stating that they need it because, and it’s for schoolwork. And even for a car, FEMA can assist you with one car. In some cases, if you have the need for two cars, you state it. You say, “Well, two parents. One has to go pick up kids or babysitters, the other one has to go the other way to work,” so it’s an exception. They will consider it accordingly.

This rationale does not recognize how the multigenerational immigrant family living arrangement complicates the notion of what is “extra.” While furniture and appliances may be deemed unnecessary for the purpose of replacement, they actually belong to adult children who also do not fall into the category of renters and whose names may not appear on utility bills. However, these issues are miniscule compared to the hardships nonfamilial basement renters had to endure.

Homeowners and Landlords versus Basement Renters

Basement renters, who lost so much, experienced immense challenges in seeking FEMA disaster assistance. Ferdinand and I talked about the immense losses of the basement renters in Canarsie. I expressed my concerns about the displacement of disaster survivors who lived in basements as well as the loss of personal possessions of Canarsie residents who occupied basements:

SM: Okay. So, I’ve been concerned about people who have been displaced in Canarsie, because I’ve gone to The Rockaways, and it’s a little bit different in that not a lot of people occupied the basements. But here is very unique where you have a lot of people who occupy the basements, and because the flooding was to the basements, it’s equivalent to losing a house, because it’s your entire living space in the basement. So, I’m concerned about these people and how they’re able to navigate. Is there assistance available for them?

FERDINAND: Yes, there is assistance, because they can file a claim for their personal belongings and the furniture as long as they can prove that they live there by getting a statement from the landlord saying that they’ve been living there, or they can prove that they pay bills, or they have something proving that they live there. Sometimes they replace what they lost. They can submit their receipt and ask for consideration or reconsideration based on the situation, and the inspector will come over also. When the inspector comes, they look at the situation. They don’t have to see a lot. They can just, by looking at it, they see by the depth of the water, they know how much damage that they can assess. So, from that, they can give them an average of—tell them how much they qualify for, because the inspector submits the result, and the reviewer looks at the figures.

The reality of the lived experiences of post-Sandy Canarsie survivors is that these Black immigrants incurred challenges uniquely shaped by their migration experiences. Their lack of familiarity with navigating the U.S. institutional apparatus of aid, combined with the “color blind,” “culture blind,” and “class blind” orientation of FEMA, among other bureaucratic inefficacies of governmental response, severely interrupted their receipt of disaster aid. Additionally, a more nuanced attention to the intersectional experiences of immigrants further reveals that basement renters in Canarsie experienced a particular unsung fate.

Among disaster survivors whose homes flooded, basement renters were the ones who were most likely to experience displacement suddenly and unexpectedly. This is because the flood waters engulfed their entire living space. I saw water marks that almost reached the ceiling in Canarsie. As a result, they were also the ones to suffer the highest proportional dispossession of their personal capital. Basement renters were most likely to experience disruptions to accessing social capital shared among neighbors, which was available only to those who had the option of remaining in their homes. They also lost dyadic or interpersonal social capital with friends. Yet they were also the ones who were least able to take advantage of much needed government-mediated disaster aid reaching their community. I spoke with Vidalia, a FEMA caseworker at the FEMA disaster response center in Canarsie:

SM: Did you see differences in experiences based on the floors that people lived in?

VIDALIA: Yes, definitely. Those that were in the basement, those were the ones that were affected.

SM: And the first floor was not as much?

VIDALIA: Very few on the first floor. Most of the ones that were flooded were the basements.

SM: About how many feet of flooding did they tell you?

VIDALIA: Well, we’ve had some up to six, seven feet of water.

SM: Do you recall the different stories of the people who came in?

VIDALIA: Some people were able to have the damage restored, repaired.

SM: Who did these tend to be?

VIDALIA: These would be the homeowners. And some people, because the basement was so badly damaged, they were just going to put the property up for sale.

Unlike many basement renters, homeowners were more knowledgeable that FEMA would provide grant assistance, while renters were not as aware that they too qualified for assistance in replacing their personal property. Amelia, the HUD specialist volunteering at the FEMA-run center to provide housing assistance to displaced Sandy survivors, pointed out the inequalities in receipt of assistance between landlords who occupied the higher levels of buildings and the tenants who rented either the first floor or basement:

AMELIA: There’s some people that have landlords and everything was flooded out. A Haitian American tenant came in on November 26th, said that everything was flooded out. Then he was over here somehow because he called the insurance people. He found out that his landlord had been compensated, but they didn’t take care of anything in the basement that was his. He was like, “Well, what about me?” You know the hurricane took place at the end of October. They even asked him for rent for the coming month. He felt like that was a slap in the face. He lost everything.

SM: So, he didn’t apply for replacement of personal items from FEMA?

AMELIA: No. And he didn’t have renter’s insurance either. That was too bad for him.

Canarsie residents were differentially impacted depending on whether they were homeowners with access to higher floors or basement renters who had nowhere to go. What floor residents occupied and whether they were homeowners or renters were usually also a function of socioeconomic status, which was tied to whether they had attained legal immigrant status. The following exemplars explore the salient cleavages and nuances in how various classes of Canarsie disaster survivors experienced navigating FEMA’s grant assistance program.

Slow Arrival to fema Disaster Response Center

In speaking with Amelia, an African American disaster responder who is working at the housing assistance table at the center, I became aware that from the vantage point of the responders, these Black immigrants were arriving at the center much later than expected.

AMELIA: Well, I can give you my opinion on what I think is happening with a lot of the Haitians and Africans. This community from what I’ve observed is an immigrant community. I’m guessing that a lot of the people were not aware, they weren’t aware of the services that were available to them, or maybe they didn’t think that they were eligible to come here for assistance. And when they found out that they actually were, many of the assistance that we had for them, either the period had expired for them to come in, they were too late, or it was just too late.

SM: What time schedules did they miss?

AMELIA: I know that they were giving hotel rooms away for people that were in need, and a lot of those rooms were taken obviously. Hundreds of families that were affected by the storm and my guess is they didn’t know that they could come here and speak to somebody.

Among the Canarsie disaster survivors who came in, there were those who had not registered for FEMA before coming. Amelia describes the complicated disaster experiences of a young Black immigrant family whose basement apartment was fully engulfed by Sandy:

AMELIA: His wife had just had a new baby. He had a wife and two children under the age of two. They lost everything in their apartment. So, he wanted to know what we could do to help them. Not only did they lose everything, but the utility service company had also come into their apartment, shut down everything, because apparently salt water had gotten into the boiler system, because they stayed after the storm—the boiler system—then they asked them to move.

SM: And they stayed?

AMELIA: They stayed.

SM: Did they tell you how many feet of flooding they had?

AMELIA: Seven feet of water, so it went all the way up. And so, he’s like, ‘I have two young kids. They shut off the heat. They say it’s not safe for us to live there. What can I do?’ So, I set him up. Yeah, and his story was just so sad because he said I didn’t know that I was eligible to get a hotel room. I spoke to the female representative and she’s like, ‘He wasn’t even registered. He didn’t even register, and now he’s coming and asking for assistance. All the hotel rooms are already given away. In fact, some of the hotels are asking people to leave at this point, so he’s out of luck.’ And then I said, ‘Well, okay, let me try and help you find an apartment.” He said, ‘I don’t have money for even a down payment. I don’t have anything. I was not expecting this. I wasn’t prepared for anything like this.’ I went through, and I was trying to find something for him that maybe he could afford. He just couldn’t afford anything.

Time lags in obtaining information are costly and consequential during disasters, precisely because of these time horizons on programs. In some cases, there were repeated program startups, extensions, and deadlines. This situation created confusion and yet another set of delays, particularly if people were relying on word of mouth.

Even among those Canarsie disaster survivors who did register with FEMA and had received a voucher, there was no guarantee they would find an apartment to move into. These families’ experiences exemplify the reality of many immigrant, economically deprived, and working-class families who are not financially prepared for disaster. Despite these immense hardships, once this resident was able to contact the official disaster response apparatus on the ground, all Amelia could offer was a referral.

No Rental Documentation

FEMA required basement renters to produce documentation proving that they lived in the basement. Many tenants did not hold leases either due to the landlord not having permission from the city to rent out the basement, which usually holds the utility room, or due to the tenant being an immigrant lacking legal status. In these cases, landlords typically do not take on the risk of providing proof that these tenants live in their basements. Trevor, the eighteen-year-old son of Canarsie homeowners, tells me about the gentleman who rented the basement from his parents and who became displaced and lost his job all at once:

I don’t know, but the thing was that he rented the basement without a lease, because it was their friend, so he couldn’t get anything off of FEMA. He basically—I don’t know if somebody put it in his head that it was a loss. I guess he didn’t feel comfortable staying here anymore. My mom cut him that check, she wasn’t like that, he was a good tenant, paid on time, so she gave him the money back, the security. And all that. And a little extra to get on his feet. That kind of thing. When the power went out, he was out of work. He seemed really stressed or anxious.

Amelia shared that most people who were seeking assistance were displaced basement renters.

AMELIA: A lot of them that come to my table are from basement apartments. I would say the majority of them are basement apartments. I think all of them, actually, but I’ve talked to a couple of homeowners.

SM: About how many cases do you think?

AMELIA: Well, I keep a log of that. Some days are slower than others. Twenty people if you count today. So, nineteen of those lived in basement apartments?

SM: And then, of those, how many would you say lived with friends versus how many were in hotels?

AMELIA: Not nineteen of them. Because a couple of them were homeowners, actually. Some of them were homeowners. Let me say, I’m guessing, maybe seventeen of them. And then everybody else is homeowners.

SM: Do you see any difference between what the homeowners and the people who live in basements experience? Anything that stands out to you? [Interruption]

AMELIA: Some of the patrons are renters.

SM: You said that there were differences based on the floors that they lived in?

AMELIA: Yeah, because they were basement apartments.

SM: So, regarding the basement apartments, did you notice any differences among people who did not evacuate the basement before the storm?

AMELIA: A lot of them didn’t evacuate because they didn’t think they were going to be hit this hard.

SM: When the water receded, did they continue to stay in the basement?

AMELIA: No, they couldn’t stay because of the mold problem. There were a lot of mold issues, so they couldn’t stay.

SM: So, you didn’t encounter anyone who stayed after the storm? [Nods]

SM: Where are they now?

AMELIA: Well the homeowners stayed in their homes, but they just couldn’t go down to their basements.

SM: What about the people who lived in the basements?

AMELIA: They rented the basements, so they don’t have access to other floors. They had to find other housing.

Finding Housing

Amelia told me about her friend who had been displaced out of her basement apartment. I always welcomed these accounts because of the difficulty of running into persons who were displaced out of the neighborhood or who were still in shelters and had not come into the disaster response center for assistance.

AMELIA: I had a friend that was affected also, and she couldn’t stay in the basement, so what her landlord did was she moved her to the top floor in one of her bedrooms, but she couldn’t stay in the basement. They stayed until Rapid Repair came and fixed it up.

SM: Then she went back down?

AMELIA: She’s not going back to the basement because there’s still damage, so they took out all the mold and they took out the boiler and all that other stuff. The landlord is going to put the house up for sale.

SM: What’s going to happen to your friend in the meantime?

AMELIA: She found another apartment to live in.

SM: Did she go to a basement? [Chuckles]

AMELIA: No more basement. [Chuckles]

SM: I’m going to ask you a little bit about your friend. What’s her profession?

AMELIA: She is an insurance adjuster.

SM: So, she would know the process? Okay.

AMELIA: Yeah.

SM: How quickly did it take her to get another apartment?

AMELIA: I think it took her about a month, a month and a half. She found it last week.

SM: Did she remain in the same area?

AMELIA: No. She’s in Flatbush. This happened over in Canarsie, Brooklyn, but she’s over in Flatbush, Brooklyn, now.

SM: Did she ever tell you whether she wanted to be in Canarsie, whether she wanted to move away from Canarsie because of the flooding, or was it wherever she could find an apartment?

AMELIA: Well, I don’t think she really wanted to move out of Canarsie. But because of the housing situation—because so many homes in that area were flooded—she just moved away from there so that if anything happened there, she wouldn’t be affected.

In the above case, Amelia’s friend benefits from both her human capital and her social capital through her connections. Amelia’s friend was employed and had some knowledge of the housing market in the area. She also benefited from having a close enough relationship with the landlord to allow her to stay in a safer part of the building. However, in some scenarios people who occupied basements were also unemployed and did not enjoy this close relationship with their landlords or a local government worker and happened to volunteer at a disaster response center. Some were also unemployed before the storm, and others became unemployed as a result of the storm and faced double jeopardy.

Many basement renters encounter challenges with finding housing. Finding new housing is even more challenging for large families. Amelia, who also held a graduate degree in public administration, speaks about the housing discrimination that displaced disaster survivors were experiencing:

AMELIA: Well, we work during disaster recovery, and as far as housing goes, we are trying to point people in the right direction. People that might have been affected by the storm that are maybe Section Eight voucher holders that are in public housing that might be homeless. Any sort of housing issue.

SM: So, you were just telling me about the people who are homeless. Have you seen any?

AMELIA: [Nods] There hasn’t been equal opportunity as well, because we find that—we’ve heard that there are some stories of discrimination as well. Maybe a family tries to rent an apartment. They’ve been affected by the storm. They’re looking for new housing, and maybe even an apartment. They’re told ‘I can’t accommodate you guys because the family is too big.’ Something like that.

SM: Do you deal with cases like that? About how many cases you think you’ve seen?

AMELIA: I haven’t seen any personally, but I just heard that coworkers and other people working at the disaster response center. But that’s something that many victims have been facing.

SM: What happens to them, those victims who can’t get permanent housing?

AMELIA: They’ll either end up in shelters if they can’t find permanent housing. They’ll end up in shelters. They’ll go live with their family. They might just be homeless. But that’s why we’re here trying to address the needs and trying to help them find some sort of accommodation.

No Legal Status

Immigrants without legal status face an especially high burden when it comes to navigating bureaucracies even for lifesaving assistance. Therefore, during my conversation with Ferdinand, the FEMA site manager, I inquired about what was available to these immigrants through FEMA. Although he never said this, the conversation exuded a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach and the usual refrain of no one is calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement that one hears whenever they press organizations about the welfare of those who lack legal status. Ferdinand also surmised that immigrants lacking legal status are not necessarily left behind because they also belong to mixed-status families, where the head of household qualifies. In this sense they indirectly benefit from assistance. Beyond the question of ineligibility, the fear of seeking assistance is a huge challenge among this population of disaster survivors and those hoping to serve them. Our conversation challenged both of us to consider the invisible barriers to seeking assistance that bureaucrats are not always perceptive to. I engaged Ferdinand, a Caribbean American, like myself, and someone who has deep insight into this community, in deeper discussion:

SM: So, for people who lack legal status, and they don’t have any U.S.-born family member in the household that qualifies them for FEMA assistance, what happens to them?

FERDINAND: They can register. When they call the helpline, they will ask for a name. They’re not going to ask for status.

SM: Social Security number?

FERDINAND: They will ask for—yeah, they need that.

SM: So, that’s a problem.

FERDINAND: Definitely.

SM: Because if you don’t have status, then you don’t have a Social Security number.

FERDINAND: Yeah, we can’t do anything.

SM: That’s the grey area. Do you see a lot of that happening? Where people don’t?

FERDINAND: No, not since I’ve been here, no.

SM: So, I think some of what’s happening is that there’s already filtering that occurs even before survivors get here.

FERDINAND: Yeah, probably.

SM: People who don’t have it don’t even come.

FERDINAND: Yeah, well let’s put it this way. If they’re here, they are functioning. There must be somebody that they can go under. I mean, they are not out in the cold, because I let them know and I tell them. Tell them, don’t be afraid. We have nothing to do with immigration. So, if they feel comfortable, let them come here, and I’ll talk to them. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid because we’re here for you. We’re here for you. Don’t let people scare you and tell you, ‘Yeah, immigration.’ We have nothing to do with immigration.

SM: Right. I think they won’t come, especially because it says ‘Federal Agency’ [as I point to a logo]. FEMA is also a ‘Federal Agency.’ ‘Homeland Security.’ [I read aloud]

FERDINAND: It says that? Where?

SM: Yeah, in this line.

FERDINAND: Oh, no.

SM: It’s right there.

FERDINAND: That is something. That is true. That is true. I didn’t even think about that. Oh my gosh. But hopefully some of them don’t understand what that means.

SM: Well, at least, it’s really important that they’ve tried to put people here who have the same cultural background or nationality.

FERDINAND: Yeah, but it wasn’t planned that way. They didn’t know that I had the same background, because they were going to open a center. I don’t know where they were going to send me, but my plan wasn’t to be here. Not here. So, when I saw it, I said, ‘Oh, that’s my [old] neighborhood.’

A number of Canarsie Sandy survivors learned about the disaster response center through word of mouth. The fact that Ferdinand had a shared social identity, was from the community, and openly welcomed disaster survivors may have attracted some to the center who may have otherwise stayed away. However, the elephant in the room is that both FEMA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which executes deportations, are under the authority of the Department of Home-land Security. Therefore, it is not unimaginable that mixed-status families could see this connection as a legitimate basis for not seeking critical disaster recovery resources.

The Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, despite several amendments to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, kept the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This potentially causes a hindrance for mixed-status immigrant families who are experiencing hardship but fear ICE. Although immigration enforcement was not a priority at the disaster response centers, the symbolism of the DHS signification can lead to unnecessary ambivalence to seeking needed disaster assistance for qualifying members of mixed-status families.