By Mireya Navarro, April 19, 2011, New York Times
In the weeks after the oil spill, Tuan Nguyen visited 15 towns around the Gulf Coast to seek out Vietnamese fishermen whose lack of English made their sudden loss of livelihood even more daunting. By some estimates, as many as one-fourth to one-third of Louisiana’s 12,400 licensed commercial fishermen immigrated from Vietnam.
As deputy director of a nonprofit group in New Orleans serving their needs, Mr. Nguyen saw to it that as many as possible received emergency funds to buy food and pay utility bills and helped some get mental health counseling. Some were ashamed to accept handouts, he said.
The lines of dazed and worried fishermen outside his center, the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corporation, are long gone. But Mr. Nguyen, 31, said his staff was still working nonstop to put lives back together. “We still see the same familiar faces,” he said, referring to men who have yet to go back to work or have trouble getting by.
Still, hardly any of them have left New Orleans so far, he said. “This is home,” said Mr. Nguyen, whose own parents arrived from Vietnam before he was born. “Everybody knows everybody.”
Few of the workers have skills beyond fishing. The center, which now handles about 400 cases, recently received money to help train some of them for land-based employment as welders, sous-chefs or micro-farmers, working small-scale farms.
Most of the Vietnamese fishermen have been dissatisfied with payments offered through a $20 billion compensation fund set up by BP, which has been accused of inconsistency on interim and final payments. Some opted for a quick, final payment of $5,000 to avoid the delays, Mr. Nguyen said, only to regret it later. “For a lot of people, it’s simply not enough,” he said.
He sees an upside nonetheless: about 200 fishermen have organized as the United Louisiana Vietnamese American Fisherfolks to work on a range of issues. “They’re not as confused or scared as they were,” Mr. Nguyen said.
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The Restaurant Owner: Oil Rolled in, and Tables at Two Places Emptied Out (April 20, 2011)
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The Conservationist: Tracking Flow of Oil on His Own (April 20, 2011)
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