Loved ones of missing migrants face dilemma

Long before he disappeared, Leobardo Lopez Pascual had learned to be invisible.

Like hundreds of other undocumented workers in and around the World Trade Center, the 41-year-old cook at Windows on the World knew that staying in this country meant avoiding attention. He kept to himself and worked hard, mailing a small check each week to his wife and four children in Mexico.

But when Lopez Pascual vanished among the thousands of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his relatives, also here illegally, found themselves torn between the need for aid and information and the fear of exposure to authorities.

“We are fearful because we gave information about ourselves. [But] we had to get answers,” said Gerardo Pascual, an uncle who decided to come forward along with Leobardo’s brother in the hope of retrieving his body.

Families and roommates in immigrant neighborhoods throughout New York face this dilemma as lives of careful anonymity are overturned by a disaster that did not discriminate.

Hundreds of other undocumented dishwashers, delivery workers and bus staff from the trade center area survived the attacks, only to find their employers’ businesses destroyed or shuttered. Once paid in cash or employed by firms now reluctant to confirm their use of illegal immigrants, these workers are struggling to provide the documentation needed to receive disaster benefits available to displaced workers.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has pledged not to pursue cases against illegal workers or those who employ them based on information gathered as a result of the attacks. Yet many undocumented residents are wary.

No one knows exactly how many undocumented immigrants were among the victims. Estimates by community groups range from 40 to 100. But some of the same groups say the estimates are premature.

“The early figure on Haitian victims was five, and that seems outrageously low,” said Merrie Archer, associate director for programs and development at the New York-based National Coalition on Haitian Rights. “Seeing the numbers for the Dominican community or the Puerto Rican community, proportionally, it doesn’t seem possible. . . . Haitians have the same types of jobs.”

A count by Tepeyac Association, a nonprofit immigrants’ group, found 10 Dominican victims. The city’s Haitian and Dominican populations are comparable in size -- 350,000 to 400,000, according to the 2000 census and community estimates.

Relatives far away

Another impediment to an accurate count is that many of the city’s undocumented workers live far from close relatives. In those cases, getting personal information from relatives in poor or remote towns is nearly impossible.

“It is so difficult to get any benefits for these people and we are afraid that it will take too long,” said Brother Joel Magallan, a Jesuit missionary and executive director of Tepeyac, now serving as a clearinghouse for immigrants affected by the attacks.

Even late last week, the group was receiving new calls about victims. In one case, a 15-year-old girl called Thursday from a pay phone in Guatemala City to provide a shred of new information about her mother, who vanished Sept. 11.

Without much more than a name and age, however, Tepeyac has been unable to file a claim for benefits on the girl’s behalf.

That case is on top of 65 missing persons cases that Tepeyac has filed successfully.

The group has had measured success in getting disaster aid for undocumented families.

The state Crime Victims Board is providing lump-sum or partial payments up to $1,500 to victims’ families. The Red Cross is offering up to $30,000 to cover housing, food and other urgent costs, regardless of a family’s immigration status.

Proving that a family member is missing requires identification to establish a relationship, as well as documents, such as a letter from an employer or an affidavit from witnesses, that confirms the person’s location on Sept 11. New York City and the state are offering free legal help to families struggling to prove their case.

The challenge of substantiating a claim for benefits is even greater for undocumented workers now unemployed as a result of the attacks.

Ineligible for insurance

Illegal immigrants are not eligible for unemployment insurance. They may apply for cash assistance from the September 11th fund, managed jointly by the United Way and the New York Community Trust, but each case is considered based on the evidence to support the claim.

“We are trying to be flexible but we just need to do it on a case-by-case basis,” said Julie Goldscheid, general counsel for Safe Horizon, the group helping administer the funds.

If workers lack a pay stub or other documents, they can prove employment with an affidavit from other employees or a letter from their employer, Goldscheid said.

But even those documents are hard to gather, according to workers who fill Tepeyac’s offices each day in search of assistance.

Jose Luis Reyes, a lanky 15-year-old, said he worked one block from the trade center as a dishwasher at a Mexican restaurant closed since Sept. 11. He has no paperwork to prove his employment and has been unable to find or reach the manager. With $230 due for rent next month, Reyes, who lives with four others in an apartment in Harlem, said he may have no choice but to return to Mexico.

“I don’t have any money to pay for food or transportation,” he said.

Delfino Cielo, 28, had three years of seniority at a steakhouse that is now closed. A slumping job market has made it difficult for him to get any job interviews, and the few he has found didn’t work out because he’s undocumented, he said.

“Most of the restaurants, they ask for a Social Security number so I just walk away,” said Cielo, who lives in Queens with his girlfriend.

`Workers left behind’

“We are very concerned about displaced workers,” said Dennis Diaz, lead organizer for the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees International Union. “With all due respect to the [families of] victims, there is a lot of money available to them, but there is not as much going to the workers left behind.”

In total, an estimated 11,900 restaurant jobs have been lost in New York since Sept. 11, according to an analysis by the non-partisan Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany.

One of those out of work is Gerardo Pascual, Leobardo’s uncle. The elder Pascual was a dishwasher at the Windows restaurant, a job his nephew helped him get.

Trying not to dwell on his own family’s mounting needs, Gerardo Pascual now holds the hope of finding both a job and his nephew. His goal, in emerging from the shadows of the undocumented community, is to secure a measure of comfort for his nephew’s wife, Mirna.

“All I want is to find a body. That’s all,” he said.