{"id":17421,"date":"2021-02-25T10:16:53","date_gmt":"2021-02-25T15:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/davidnoriega\/the-undocumented-immigrants-who-rebuilt-new-york-after-sandy"},"modified":"2021-02-25T16:46:10","modified_gmt":"2021-02-25T21:46:10","slug":"the-undocumented-immigrants-who-rebuilt-new-york-after-sandy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/archives\/17421","title":{"rendered":"The Undocumented Immigrants Who Rebuilt New York After Sandy"},"content":{"rendered":"As Superstorm Sandy\u2019s floodwaters receded from the New York metropolitan area, much of the hardest, dirtiest, and most dangerous work fell to immigrant day laborers.<\/b> Their stories, in their own words, as told to BuzzFeed News\u2019 David Noriega.\r\n
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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nAfter the destruction and death and confusion, what 2012\u2019s Superstorm Sandy left behind was work. The storm littered roadways with the trunks and branches of trees. It flooded hundreds of thousands of basements, rotting walls and corroding wires, and exposing insulation. And it ripped houses clear off their foundations and deposited them in other people\u2019s yards alongside marooned boats. The storm damaged or destroyed more than 650,000 homes<\/a> in New York and New Jersey alone, and caused some $50 billion in damage in the U.S.\r\n\r\nSomeone had to clean it all and \u2014 slowly \u2014 rebuild it.\r\n\r\nAt least 4,000-day laborers worked on Sandy recovery in the New York metro area, according to an estimate provided to BuzzFeed News by Baruch College sociologist H\u00e9ctor Cordero-Guzm\u00e1n and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Cordero-Guzm\u00e1n estimated, based on the usual characteristics of the day laborer population, that some 75% of those workers were undocumented.\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s been two years since the disaster, and BuzzFeed News spoke with nearly two dozen immigrant day laborers who worked to clean up the New York metropolitan area.\r\n\r\nMost of these workers hail from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America, and the large majority are undocumented. Some requested that we change their names and hide their faces for fear of deportation or retaliation from contractors; names that have been changed or truncated are marked with an asterisk. All interviews were conducted in Spanish.\r\n

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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nMiguel \u00c1ngel Pi\u00f1eda, 33<\/b>\r\n\r\nStaten Island, New York\r\n\r\n\u201cMaybe two or three days after the storm, when the water started to go down, everything was chaos. There was no gasoline, people had lost their jobs. The first person who called me was a doctor I had done work for before.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe doctor hired Pi\u00f1eda and a group of other men to empty his basement and clear rubble from his property.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey didn\u2019t give us gloves or masks or anything.\u201d One day, believing a worker had tried to steal scrap metal from the house, the doctor threatened Pi\u00f1eda and his colleagues: \u201cI\u2019ll take out my gun and kill all of you.\u201d\r\n\r\nPi\u00f1eda had experience as an electrician, and about a week later he got work with an electrical contractor restoring power to homes in the area. Pi\u00f1eda said the contractor ordered him to do illegal work: repairing and replacing meters, a task restricted to electrical utility workers. Pi\u00f1eda said he opened the meters by cutting through Con Edison\u2019s locks with a power grinder.\r\n\r\n(A Con Edison spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the utility is not aware of such illegal work being done after the storm, but said it may have been performed by \u201ca rogue contractor skirting the city\u2019s regulation.\u201d)\r\n\r\nIn most cases, Pi\u00f1eda said the cables delivering electricity to the homes were still live.\r\n\r\n\u201cPeople were desperate because they didn\u2019t have power. The kind of work I\u2019d usually do in three days I had to do in a few hours \u2026 One time, I was replacing a meter panel, and I felt a piece of plastic break \u2014 the piece that keeps the power line from touching the metal of the panel. Since I had been doing this work for a few days and I knew the cables were live, all I\u2019d been thinking was, When is something going to happen?<\/i> So when I felt the plastic break, at the moment before the cable touched the metal, I reacted \u2014 I jumped off my ladder. And then I heard an explosion, and all I saw was this ball of fire \u2026\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen I opened my eyes I couldn\u2019t see anything. I saw light, and nothing else, like when you stare at the sun. Two or three minutes went by before I could see again \u2026 I ran to my car and looked in the mirror and my eyebrows were all brown. The tips were scorched. My eyelashes were half burnt off \u2026 Nothing worse, thank god.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m not from here, from this country, but I\u2019ve lived half my life in Staten Island, and when I saw that disaster, well, the truth is that it hurt \u2026 There wasn\u2019t racism then, not like now or like before. There was a lapse of time when Americans didn\u2019t see us as immigrants, but as other people here dealing with the same things.\u201d\r\n

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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nAlberto \u00c1vila, 26<\/b>\r\n\r\nKeyport, New Jersey\r\n\r\nLike many day laborers, \u00c1vila first did volunteer work after Sandy before he looked for any paid jobs. He and a group of workers from CASA Freehold, a worker center, and immigrant advocacy group, helped rebuild a church in Union Beach, New Jersey, ripping up rotten floorboards and laying new ones.\r\n\r\nLater, \u00c1vila worked for pay cleaning out a flooded video arcade in Keyport, on the Jersey Shore. \u201cWe had to drag out all the machines, really heavy machines. There was humidity, mold, mud, everything \u2026 I wound up getting sick for almost a month, just from three days of work. I don\u2019t know if I breathed something in or if it was just the cold and the humidity. I had a fever for three or four days, but I felt the symptoms for a month. I still went to work, but I could barely breathe \u2026\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m from Mexico. From Michoac\u00e1n. I\u2019ve been here since I was 14, working ever since. I became a man at that age. Not going to school, hiding from the police \u2026 I\u2019m sick of this country, bro, working as an animal since I was 14.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd yet, after the storm: \u201cI felt sad for people, more than anything. And I felt like helping. Even though they might not think about you very much, you think about them, when you see that they fought their whole lives for something \u2014 a business or a home. Then you see them with nothing.\u201d\r\n

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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nReyna*, 47<\/b>\r\n\r\nStaten Island, New York\r\n\r\n\u201cMy usual job is cleaning houses, so when the storm happened I was left without work. The houses didn\u2019t have electricity, and who knows where the owners were \u2014 I would call them but they wouldn\u2019t answer \u2026 Some time later I got a call from a woman, one of my clients, to come help her clean up the basement of her house \u2026\r\n\r\n\u201cThe basement was filthy. She gave me gloves, but they were the really thin kind, and they kept breaking. My fingers started turning white and the skin started peeling off around the fingertips. All she gave me was a mop, a broom, and some trash bags. I had to carry out all the furniture and clean the mud off the floor. She paid me the usual: $10 an hour \u2026 They never treated me badly. They\u2019re good people, they treat me with respect. I was grateful for the work.\u201d\r\n\r\nAfter helping clean four flooded houses, Reyna began feeling sick. \u201cI think I got some kind of infection. When I tried to breathe, I would feel a lot of pain in my chest and in my back. My throat hurt, my eyes itched \u2026 I couldn\u2019t breathe. I just couldn\u2019t.\r\n\r\n\u201cFor two months I would get these attacks, like asthma attacks. I don\u2019t have medical insurance. I didn\u2019t go to the hospital because the emergency room is too expensive, I would have gotten a very big bill and I wouldn\u2019t have been able to pay it. I never go to the doctor because they ask for too many papers, and I don\u2019t have Social Security or anything like that. I used home remedies, breathed in water vapor\u2026\u201d\r\n\r\nWeeks later, Reyna recovered. \u201cI think people here sometimes don\u2019t appreciate what they have. This is a beautiful country. Where I come from there is very little water. Here there is a lot of water. Sometimes people who have everything don\u2019t realize it. Some of them \u2014 not all of them.\u201d\r\n

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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nEnrique Guti\u00e9rrez, 24<\/b>\r\n\r\nLong Beach and Oceanside, Long Island\r\n\r\n\u201cAt first we were worried that people would die. But once we realized there wasn\u2019t that much human damage, most damage to houses, even though we knew so much was destroyed, then we thought mostly about the work.\r\n\r\n\u201cIn all the basements and first floors, everything was filled with water, so everything had to be dragged outside. And the walls that the water reached were wet, they were rotten, they smelled bad. Because you had water that was there for a month. And all the dirty water that was in the sewers rose up.\r\n\r\n\u201cSo we had to do the work with all the risks, with bosses who wouldn\u2019t give us safety equipment. That\u2019s how we had to do it.\r\n\r\n\u201cI had a boss after Sandy who didn\u2019t pay me overtime. He would take me to work and say, \u2018OK, I\u2019m going to give you $120 at 4 o\u2019clock, and at 4 o\u2019clock you can leave.\u2019 So I would go and work, and 4 o\u2019clock comes and goes, and nothing. It\u2019s that over time that they don\u2019t pay you, even if they keep you working very late. So you work more hours for less money. That\u2019s their thing, always: more work for less money.\u201d\r\n

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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nEduardo*, 38<\/b>\r\n\r\nColts Neck, New Jersey\r\n\r\n\u201cI didn\u2019t think the storm was going to hit so hard. The next day I got a call from one of my bosses telling me to show up to work at 7:30. We\u2019d been hired for 80 hours to clear fallen trees and branches around some city offices \u2026 then the snowstorm came\u201d \u2014 the nor\u2019easter that brought sleet and snow to an already storm-ravaged New York on Nov. 7, 2012.\r\n\r\n\u201cSo we went back to the same place. I think the snowstorm destroyed more trees even than Sandy. And I remember that my colleague told me he didn\u2019t want to use the cherry picker to cut the higher branches because he was afraid of heights. I had experience cutting trees but never using a cherry picker. I like to learn how to use all sorts of machinery, so I said yes. The days went by, and I started getting good at it.\r\n\r\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if it was the boredom from doing the same thing every day or the sound of the chainsaw, but I wasn\u2019t paying attention \u2026 The branch was pinned against the cherry picker, so when I sawed through it, the part that was still attached to the tree snapped up and hit me in the face, between my nose and my mouth.\r\n\r\n\u201cThey gave us helmets, but nothing to protect our faces. And I remember I couldn\u2019t even pronounce a single word when I went to tell the foreman I\u2019d been hit. I couldn\u2019t even tell him what happened, because my mouth was so swollen.\r\n\r\n\u201cI went to the hospital with my boss\u2019s brother. I told them at the hospital that this was a work accident, but the brother didn\u2019t want to give them the information for the company\u2019s insurance. He said the bills should go to me directly, then I would take the bills to the boss. He said that\u2019s how the company operated\u2026\r\n\r\n\u201cSo then I got a bill for $1,000. I took the bill to my boss, and he said don\u2019t worry about it. Some time went by and I got the same bill again. So I asked him what happened, and he said that I had to wait until it went to debt collection so that he could negotiate a lower price \u2026 My wife convinced me to talk to the lawyer who\u2019s handling my immigration case. The lawyer said no way can you let it go to collection.\r\n\r\n\u201cSo I went to the boss and told him that I needed him to pay, or at least tell me it wasn\u2019t going to. I said, \u2018We\u2019ve worked together before. We have a good relationship. I don\u2019t want to sue you.\u2019 And that\u2019s when he finally took care of it.\u201d\r\n

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David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nJos\u00e9 Cuba, 53<\/b>\r\n\r\nConey Island, Brooklyn\r\n\r\nThree city-owned hospitals were flooded by Sandy. Signal Restoration Services, the private contractor hired to repair them, was found by the New York attorney general to have underpaid its workers and was ordered to pay $500,000 in back wages<\/a>.\r\n\r\nJos\u00e9 Cuba was one of those workers.\r\n\r\n\u201cI was on the corner of 69th and Roosevelt [in Jackson Heights, Queens], where the day laborers usually get together, and an Ecuadorian guy I know showed up with three vans and filled them with workers. As the day went on he kept bringing more and more people to the hospital \u2026 We worked every day, Monday to Sunday, from 7 in the morning until 9 at night.\r\n\r\n\u201cEventually they brought in big lights to illuminate the hospital, but the first few days it was dark. And the first few days they didn\u2019t give us any safety equipment. You showed up to work with the clothes you were wearing, that\u2019s it \u2026\r\n\r\n\u201cOur job was to clean up the hospital. We took out everything. Televisions, computers, X-ray machines, gurneys. We went from room to room, a little bit little \u2014 waiting rooms, operating rooms, the morgue \u2026 Then we demolished everything that was damaged.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe first few weeks they paid us $12 an hour with no overtime. But then Local 79 [the Construction and General Building Laborers Union] found out and told us they weren\u2019t paying us enough. They paid us in cash, once a week. They said they would pay us at the end of every week, but it was, you know, the day after, or two days after, or the week after \u2026 It\u2019s not that I\u2019m a conformist. But for someone who\u2019s illegal, who doesn\u2019t have papers \u2014 you have to take what you can get.\u201d\r\n\r\n

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\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\nRead more: http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/davidnoriega\/the-undocumented-immigrants-who-rebuilt-new-york-after-sandy<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Superstorm Sandy\u2019s floodwaters receded from the New York metropolitan area, much of the hardest, dirtiest, and most dangerous work fell to immigrant day laborers. Their stories, in their own words, as told to BuzzFeed News\u2019 David Noriega. View this image \u203a David Noriega \/ BuzzFeed After the destruction and death and confusion, what 2012\u2019s … Continue reading The Undocumented Immigrants Who Rebuilt New York After Sandy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":17422,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[137,781,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals","category-crime-justice","category-media"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/14874760529367-the-undocumented-immigrants-who-rebuilt-new-york--2-15916-1414532926-22_dblbig.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134778,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17421\/revisions\/134778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/effectsofanxiety.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}