The Limits of Compassion

At the Family Assistance Center housed in Pier 94 along the Hudson River, Edgar Martinez, a 30-year-old native of the Mexican state of Puebla, listens to a Federal Emergency Management Agency official call out the numbers 847, 848 and 849. Martinez glances at the slip of paper in his hand: 1131.

“I’ve been here five hours already,” says Martinez, his babyish, deep-brown face under a cap advertising MetLife insurance. He wears a gray sweatshirt, jeans and work-boots splattered with kitchen grease.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Edgar Martinez stood at the grill of a restaurant called The Kitchen, at the corner of Warren Street and West Broadway, three blocks from the World Trade Center. When the first tower began to fall, Martinez ran for his life--but only after shutting off the gas on his grill.

This is Martinez’s first visit to the Family Assistance Center, and it is a measure of his desperation that he, an undocumented worker, would even attempt to get public assistance. Immigrant advocates in New York estimate that hundreds of undocumented workers lost jobs in lower Manhattan as a result of the disaster. Many, like Martinez, immediately hit the streets looking for new jobs.

“I started at Houston Street [in lower Manhattan] and walked as far north as Times Square,” says Martinez. “I stepped into every business I could think of that would have a job--restaurants, hotels, bars, hardware stores, markets, flower stands.” But there were no jobs.

So Martinez, who supports a wife and 8-month-old son, showed up at Pier 94 this morning. He’d heard rumors from fellow migrants that cash assistance, food baskets and clothes were available. But Martinez is worried. When his number is called, there will be an interview with a caseworker. He thinks he knows what he will be asked for: a Social Security number, a green card, an employee identification card or a notarized letter from his employer verifying that Martinez was indeed a cook at The Kitchen. He has none of these things.

Martinez worked for $400 a week in under-the-table cash. He never even bothered to buy false papers on the black market. “I never needed those things,” he says. “Wherever I worked, it was always the same. Just cash.”

Now he is destitute and scared. “Who knows if they’ll help me or not?” asks Martinez.

Americans have opened their hearts and pocketbooks to the victims of Sept. 11, because in a fundamental way we are all victims. But now the question becomes whether our compassion extends to Edgar Martinez and hundreds of others like him. Before the disaster, Americans generally professed little sympathy for “illegals.” But now is a time to set aside the larger questions of the immigration debate and recognize that, in this case, victims are victims, whether they have papers or not.

Organizations that advocate for the undocumented have begun to urge a limited kind of “amnesty” to facilitate aid to the invisible victims of terrorism. As things now stand, family members of those undocumented workers who perished in the conflagration are finding it hard to prove that their loved ones worked in the twin towers--or that they even existed at all.

“The victims who lacked legal residency in life should be afforded this status in death,” says Brother Joel Magallan, a Jesuit missionary and director of Asociacion Tepeyac de Nueva York, an agency that has become a clearing house for Latin American twin-towers victims. “It’s the least we can do for them. After all, they contributed to this country with their hard work while they were alive, and they died for it in what even President Bush says is a war.”

The city and state of New York, as well as the federal government, have publicly stated that anyone who lost a loved one, housing or employment is considered a crime victim--a victim of terrorism. And in theory, every victim, regardless of immigration status, is eligible for emergency public assistance.

But in practice, the typical undocumented worker spends a lifetime hiding his existence--or, as the case may be, assuming someone else’s identity. A restaurant owner who has grown fond of a hard-working employee named Pedro Flores may never know that his true name is Juan Moreno.

Undocumented workers are generally loath to seek out even fundamental public services. They don’t call the police or seek urgent medical care because they fear being handed over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Now, the INS is telling the migrants to come forward, promising that any information recorded for aid purposes will not be used against them. But many migrants are remaining without aid rather than trusting an agency that for decades has sown nothing but anxiety in their community.

Some, like Martinez, have come forward. They will soon learn whether there are limits to our compassion for the victims of Sept. 11. Martinez has not heard from his employer since the morning of the attacks. Indeed, there is no guarantee that his old boss, if Martinez can find him, would write and sign a letter confirming Martinez’s employment at The Kitchen. “Illegal” employment, after all, takes two: an undocumented worker and an employer. The INS needs to publicly advise employers that they will not face legal action for identifying potential victims among undocumented laborers in their employ.

Finally, government agencies, in tandem with community-based organizations, must mount a well-organized outreach effort to urge all immigrants to shed their fear and come out from the shadows. It will be a poignant moment for the undocumented. Many, for the first time in their American sojourn, will finally be called by their true names.