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PALM BEACH POST January 24, 2008
FEMA rejects complaint by farmworkers
Attorneys for farmworkers rights groups have lost their second challenge to the way the Federal Emergency Management Agency handled the workers after Hurricane Wilma. FEMA rejected a civil rights complaint filed in May 2006 by the Farm Workers Association of Florida. It had claimed the agency didn't provide enough financial aid, inspectors were rude, few of them spoke Spanish and many made only cursory inspections. In a letter dated Dec. 6 but which the farmworkers attorneys said they received in late December, FEMA said it determined no violations of federal discrimination laws occurred and it was closing the case. FEMA said that of 11 complainants interviewed by the agency, most received total assistance. "The average amount of assistance that English speaking disaster victims received was $1,579.33 and the average amount of assistance received by Spanish speaking disaster victims was $1,967.47," Pauline C. Campbell, director of FEMA's office of equal rights, wrote the group. While FEMA said the group had the right to pursue a lawsuit, "it's not clear that there's any formal avenue of appeal that would be worthwhile," farmworkers attorney Charles Elsesser said Monday from Miami. In September, U.S. Magistrate Judge Ann E. Vitunac dismissed a suit filed in February 2006 by Elsesser for the Coalition of Florida Farmworker Organizations. It claimed that after the three hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, the agency gave many workers temporary housing, but illegal immigrants slept in cars or in damaged or destroyed homes. Vitunac wrote that the coalition failed to show which of its clients were undocumented immigrants and so did not have legal standing to represent them.
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