Thread: Immigrant workers tragic 9/11 casualties

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/sto ... 4001c.html

Immigrant workers
tragic 9/11 casualties



It took five long years. But finally someone in government realized that thousands of people who developed debilitating and even fatal illnesses working at Ground Zero must be helped.
The three bills that Gov. Pataki signed on Monday begin to do just that. They benefit many of the workers, policemen, firefighters and volunteers who became sick working at Ground Zero, and the families of those who died.

But hundreds of immigrant workers and volunteers whose health was permanently affected are in danger of being left unprotected again.

"These laws directly affect Latinos and other immigrants who worked cleaning the disaster area," said Oscar Paredes, executive director of the Latin American Workers Project in Brooklyn. "They need to prove that they worked there. But many were hired as day workers, and have no way of proving it."

Most were hired to clean contaminated buildings for a measly $7.50 an hour. Worse, like everybody else, they were not told by the private contractors - or by the city - of the dangers involved, and were never given any health protection.

"Even to this day, we are taking care of Latinos who were affected when they worked at the World Trade Center or its surroundings," said Joel Magallán, the executive director of Asociación Tepeyac in Manhattan.

In fact, more than 600 people - most of them undocumented Latino immigrants in desperate need of work - were hired in those days from streetcorners to scrub dust from buildings around the World Trade Center ruins.

That dust, as we all know now, was highly toxic. It contained high levels of asbestos, silica, lead, mercury and other toxins. Only a miracle could have saved the workers from falling ill.

The number of people affected is tremendous. Paredes said that since Sept. 11, 2001, 2,600 people have sought help at the office of the Latin American Workers Project.

One of those is an Ecuadoran legal immigrant named Stalin Barcco, now 43, who for almost two months worked at Ground Zero cleaning asbestos and debris.

In October 2003, Barcco, an Astoria resident, began to experience serious difficulty breathing. The reason, doctors said, was prolonged contact with contaminated particles.

Barcco has a 21-year-old son who is in Japan with the U.S. Navy, and a 19-year-old daughter who is in college.

"I haven't been able to do anything for them in many months because I cannot work," said the former asbestos worker who used to make more than $30,000 a year. "I am always tired. Doctors say that my lungs are like a 70-year-old man's."

Also suffering from diabetes, Barcco applied for workers' compensation, but the two-year deadline had passed. Encouraged by the bills Pataki just signed, he is planning to reapply, although years of rejection and frustration have made him suspicious.

"I hope this time it is for real," he said bitterly. "For all I know, it could be just political posturing."

But at least Barcco can prove he worked at Ground Zero. The undocumented who also developed grave health problems while cleaning the disaster area have no way of proving it.

Pataki has said that there will be help for immigrants - documented or not - and their families, but "they need to talk to their employers to prove they worked in Ground Zero."

Employers, though, are not in the least forthcoming. They are aware that they broke the law by hiring the workers and placing them in dangerous working conditions, and thus are reluctant to help their former employees.

"We have called many employers asking them for letters for the workers," Paredes said. "Not one has agreed to write it."

Originally published on August 17, 2006

I guess this could be one of the hazards of being imployed illegally in a country you have no right to be in! We do have to pay the consquencies for the choices we make and I would suggest this choice was made by the illegals and I don't feel I owe them a dam thing. I am sure many illegals have been killed while being on a job illegally in the United States, this was just another job to them, I don't feel our government owes them any compensation whatsoever for their any illness they might have acquired for doing the cleanup of the WTC. If that is a hard view, I am sorry, life gets hard sometimes.

Nitty,

I guess this could be one of the hazards of being imployed illegally in a country you have no right to be in! We do have to pay the consquencies for the choices we make and I would suggest this choice was made by the illegals and I don't feel I owe them a dam thing. I am sure many illegals have been killed while being on a job illegally in the United States, this was just another job to them, I don't feel our government owes them any compensation whatsoever for their any illness they might have acquired for doing the cleanup of the WTC. If that is a hard view, I am sorry, life gets hard sometimes.

Well said Nitty. What's good for the goose should be good for the gander.

bearpaw, so good to see you .

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/monte ... 441602.htm

Posted on Tue, Sep. 05, 2006

Illegal immigrants near WTC face serious illnesses

By PAUL H.B. SHIN
New York Daily News

NEW YORK - It has become an unspoken shame of Ground Zero.

Thousands of undocumented immigrants who toiled amid toxic dust to clean buildings around the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks are suffering from serious health problems -- but have few places to turn for treatment, concerned doctors and advocates said.

The only free medical care for these workers -- a modest, privately funded program at Bellevue Hospital -- may lose its financial benefactor a year from now unless the government steps in.

The workers who played a pivotal role in reopening the nation's financial hub within days of the attacks said they feel abandoned, especially as anti-immigrant sentiments are stoked in Washington.

"When we were needed on 9/11, no one asked for our papers. Now they don't want us here anymore," said Lucelly Gil, 50, who worked in the disaster zone for months, wearing only a flimsy dust mask and plastic gloves for protection.

A New York Daily News investigation documented the exploitation of the undocumented workers just a few months after the attacks. The January 2002 exclusive revealed that contractors had been plucking illegal immigrants off streetcorners and putting them to work without giving them safety training or protective equipment.

"All of us who worked in the disaster zone worked because we wanted to help the city," said Alberto Melo, 47, one of the day laborers.

Melo and Gil are suffering from ailments ranging from severe respiratory problems to depression -- symptoms also plaguing hundreds of firefighters, cops and other first responders who worked in or near the smoldering pit.

Spurred by a recent series of editorials by The News, New York Gov. George Pataki signed three laws last month aimed at covering the health costs of 9/11 responders. But the benefits won't be extended to undocumented workers.

"The only thing that mattered to the contractors was that we work quickly," Melo said, noting his boss would drop in for brief visits to the work sites wearing a heavy-duty protective mask equipped with canister filters.

Meanwhile, Melo and his fellow workers would eat their pack lunches perched on dusty piles of debris.

"We're getting sicker each day," Melo said in Spanish.

Exactly how many workers are suffering in silence is unclear, said Karah Newton of the group Beyond Ground Zero, a coalition of community and legal advocates who are trying to expand medical care for these workers and low-income residents of lower Manhattan.

But the demand for treatment among the overlooked groups suggests that the roughly 500 people currently being treated at Bellevue are "just the tip of the iceberg," Newton said.

Dr. Joan Reibman, who leads the Bellevue Hospital WTC Health Impact Treatment Program, feels strongly that government has an obligation to care for these workers.

"We got the downtown area -- the stock market, the economic heart of the United States -- functioning in two weeks of the disaster," said Reibman, who is a pulmonary specialist at the NYU School of Medicine. "The reason was because every office covered with 3 inches of dust in all the surrounding buildings was cleaned up by undocumented workers. We owe them a lot."

It will be an uphill battle trying to get government dollars for the program, currently funded by a two-year, $1.8 million grant from the American Red Cross.

New York City officials have so far been reluctant to acknowledge that health problems even among police and firefighters who worked in The Pit could be linked to the toxic substances they were exposed to.

David Worby, who is waging a lawsuit on behalf of 8,000 WTC responders and their survivors, said $20 million has been spent on city lawyers to deny claims of cops, firefighters and others who were sickened.

"The government must understand that there were other heroes, too," Melo said. "We risked our lives and health working without protection."