With MIRA, Oxfam Reaches Out to Thousands of Immigrants Hit by Katrina

Posted: 20 September 2005

Rolling through southern Mississippi in a recreational vehicle, Victoria Cintra lets immigrant workers know that there is help available to them in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Victoria Cintra describes herself as very bold.

“I don’t take things lightly,” she says. She can’t afford to: In her hands rests the fate, potentially, of countless immigrants clobbered by Hurricane Katrina.

Cintra is the Gulf Coast outreach organizer for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, or MIRA, one of Oxfam America’s newest partners, whose mission is to provide assistance and advocacy for immigrant workers across the state.

In the last five days, aboard a roving recreational vehicle, Cintra has touched base with more than 3,000 Latino and Vietnamese immigrants between Jackson and Biloxi. Equipped with leaflets broadcasting an 800 number they can call for help, Cintra has pulled into the parking lots of churches, megastores, and apartment complexes to spread her all-important message: Help is available.

“The immigrant community does not know what it is eligible for,” said Cintra, barely audible over the rattling of the RV as it lined up behind a convoy of military vehicles rolling through Biloxi. “People are displaced. They’re disoriented. They’re scared.”

For the next two months, MIRA, with the help of a $32,000 grant from Oxfam America, has dispatched Cintra to reach out to the state’s immigrant workers in areas hit hard by Katrina. She is helping to document their needs and direct them to sources of assistance. An operations coordinator based in Jackson is manning the phone and taking the 800-number calls as they come in.

And since the alliance launched the project late last week, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing, said MIRA President Bill Chandler.

Reports of Discrimination

Though the 2000 U.S. Census reports that there are 39,569 people of Hispanic or Latino origin in Mississippi, Chandler puts the actual number significantly higher.

“Two major job growth areas have attracted thousands of immigrants,” he said. “We estimate there are about 130,000 Latino immigrants in Mississippi.” Many of them have come to work in the hospitality and casino industries along the coast as well as in food processing plants.

While the 130,000 represents 4.64 percent of Mississippi’s 2.8 million residents, Chandler says that number will climb.

“We expect it to grow in the next 20 years to be more than 10 percent of the population,” he said.

Some of these changes are not coming easily to Mississippi. Katrina exposed the social fault lines.

“Even before Oxfam connected with us we had experienced many reports of discrimination against Latinos,” said Chandler, citing attempted apartment evictions as just one example. On her trip down to the coast in the RV, Cintra collected other reports, including stories of price gouging over Mexican food and sky-high rents for water-logged dwellings.

In MIRA’s Jackson office, Finia Harris is compiling some of those reports, and hearing other stories of hardship as well. She is the operations coordinator for this outreach project—and the consoling voice on the other end of the 800 line.

“They are desperate,” she said of the callers who are trying to navigate an emergency response network that is friendly to few regardless of their country of origin. But for hurricane victims who don’t speak English, the experience is even worse.

“You are alone,” said Harris. “It’s very different from American people who feel the government is taking care of them.”

A Knack for Getting Her Way

Cintra takes that—the responsibility to help others—seriously. That’s why she didn’t mind raising her voice in the middle of a Wal-Mart a few days ago and asking, for everyone to hear, why the store wouldn’t let her pass out information about Katrina.

The manager quickly withdrew his objections, she said, and allowed her to accomplish her mission. That leafleting experience was the exception rather than the rule, Cintra added.

“Everybody’s being pretty much cooperative,” she said.

Still, the outreach is not without challenges, and some of them come from the communities she is trying to help

“People are kind of scared,” she said. “A lot of them are illegal. They’re scared immigration is going to come and get them. They’d rather live in adverse conditions than be kicked out of the country.”

Issues to Watch

Recovering from Katrina isn’t simply a matter of feeding people and providing them with temporary shelter. There are longer-term structural issues that will also need to be addressed in order for people to rebuild their lives.

“We’re trying to hit every immigrant community and let them know MIRA is there to help,” said Chandler. “We expect there are going to be more problems.”

There are three issues he is particularly concerned about: He would like to see the casinos restored, along with the many jobs they bring; there needs to be an expansion of services, such as food stamps and unemployment benefits; and the housing rights of small property owners need to be guarded with vigilance.

“One of the things developers love is a hurricane,” Chandler said, because it gives them an excuse to lobby for zoning changes that force out the small guys and allow people with the deepest pockets to build their highrises.