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Catastrophe for the boat people

They were lucky. Everyone — father, mother, and three sons — survived the rough seas, landing in Thailand, where the United States generously accepted them as refugees and resettled them in Louisiana. About the same time I was weaving my way through refugee camps in Thailand and Malaysia, reporting on the survivors and their stories of despair at home and horror at sea. They were huddled on some of the world's most beautiful beaches, waiting to convince representatives of the United States, France, Sweden and other nations to accept them as new immigrants. That was 30 years ago, when the plight of the Vietnamese boat people filled newspapers as one of the most dramatic stories coming out of the Cold War in Asia.

Today Dung is known as Danny Le and he is helping the boat people who have found themselves in a decidedly different catastrophe.

Now these former boat people are ordinary Americans, mostly working poor, whose homes in Biloxi, Mississippi, were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina 2? years ago. They had the further misfortune of living in a state which considers casino development a priority over repairing or rebuilding homes. Le's job for the charity SOS Boat People is to find help for those whose homes were destroyed. My role has changed, too. No longer a daily journalist, I was recently in Mississippi as a member of the board of directors of Oxfam America, the Boston-based international charity known for its disaster relief overseas.

In the days after Katrina struck, when it became maddeningly clear that the US government wasn't doing its job, Oxfam broke with tradition and offered relief in our own country.

So here we were, the former refugee and the former reporter, exchanging notes on what was needed to ensure that Le's Vietnamese-American clients could receive some of the promised aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In some ways, the story line is similar. My old notebooks are filled with international relief officials complaining about local governments putting impossible hurdles in the way of destitute boat people. Then the insensitive officials were Thai and Malaysian and they made easy villains in our newspaper articles. This time, the local officials are Americans who are experts at camouflaging their abandonment of the poor.

Mississippi decided that homeowners without wind insurance were ineligible for federal funds dispensed through the state. The state recently transferred $600 million earmarked by Congress for homeowners' aid and gave it to a new port development project that includes a gambling casino.

In fact, most of the people without wind insurance couldn't afford it and must now rely on private charities for their recovery. A few blocks from Le are the offices of the East Biloxi Coordination Relief and Redevelopment Agency. It is the brainchild of Bill Stallworth, the sole African-American member of the Biloxi city council.

Under his umbrella group, an assortment of charities from Oxfam to Oprah Winfrey to Habitat for Humanity are building homes for the disenfranchised. Stallworth said that while he received some corporate donations, he has received no money from the state or federal government. I know I was supposed to be pleased to have played a very small role helping these boat people. But mostly I was ashamed that government generosity for the Vietnamese when they were fleeing communism evaporated when they became part of America's working poor. Back in Vietnam times are much better. Many of the beaches the boat people fled from are now luxury resorts; some villas on China Beach are selling for $2 million.

© IHT