Like so many thousands of inhabitants of the municipalities affected by the Dana, their houses were also whipped with the flood of October 29. They also feared for their life while the current seemed to drag their bodies and, after surviving, lost their jobs because of the impossibility of moving to their work in the face of the destruction of the catastrophe. But they could not request the aid aimed at those affected by the DANA or could claim their rights to their dismissals.
They did not exist for the State, worked irregularly and could not consider accessing any of the measures to recover a part of the lost. They are people without papers, many domestic workers, day laborers or construction employees, who had been trying to survive in hiding after losing everything in the municipalities razed by floods.
This Tuesday, more than 100 days after the flood, the government approved a battery of measures focused on meeting the special needs of foreign people affected by the DANA. In addition to more flexible and extend the residence permits of those who had papers, but they ran the risk of losing them because of the consequences of the floods, the Ministry of Inclusion took a way to regularize migrants in an irregular regular situation [o con cita para hacerlo antes del 4 de noviembre] in the municipalities impacted by the catastrophe.
Inclusion estimates that the measure will benefit 25,000 people, although the NGOs specialized in migration warn that it will leave many people behind when demanding registration as the only way to prove their residence in these villages, a complicated procedure to achieve for those who live in hiding .
One of the people who meets the requirements is Leydis. The woman migrated to Spain from Colombia more than two years ago and since then lives in the Valencian municipality of Chiva, where she is registered in her sister’s home. The flood destroyed the house where she lived for rent with her husband and four -year -old daughter. Since then, the family resides temporarily in a hotel room that the City Council has enabled for affected neighbors who have lost everything.
“I feel great relief. I was aware of the reform of the regulation with the new requirements, but now I can do it before. We need papers to start over, ”he says in one of the few times he has free throughout the day. From the flood, he lives further from the town and the distances for all his chores have increased. He has no car, so he goes to the race everywhere. Even more from the entry into force of the term established by the Government to request regularization.
This Thursday, when Leydis met the details of the measure after her approval in the BOE, the Colombian breathed relieved, but soon lifted the phone. The woman met the requirements of the measure and wanted to try to find out what aid could access in the marked deadlines. He also called associations to try to understand the procedures that he had to comply with and the paperwork that he had to accumulate in the established time: the norm approved by the Government gives three months to request this exceptional residence permit.
“Three months fly. You have to get going so that it does not happen to us, ”says the woman on the phone. “Hopefully the procedure is fast. There is a deadline for aid and I’m afraid not to arrive, ”says the Colombian. That fear has made him go the last two days from one side to another to present the documentation as soon as possible. For example, he says, a rental aid that would be interested in the City of Chiva ends in June. “I am still without fixed work. Although things are already improving, I would like to get some of those aid to start from scratch again, ”explains Leydis.
She and her family need to leave the parenthesis in which her day to day has become since the flood that took her home ahead and the life she had begun to build since her arrival in Spain two years ago. “Regularization is welcome because it will always be easier to get a job. If there is a possibility of obtaining certain aids as affected from the Dana, it would become very good. But if we can’t ask for them, at least we are regularized, ”he adds.
Months without employment or aid
Days after the tragedy, Leydis’s husband lost his job in the construction sector. From Chiva, in the face of the damage caused by floods it was impossible to move to Valencia, where the work where he worked was. Two days later, the man was fired. Without a contract by not having papers, he could not demand any of his rights or benefit from any of the measures promoted by the government to prevent dismissals.
The same situation lived Valentina (fictional name) and her husband. Both, of Venezuelan origin, lost their jobs because they had no way to get the days after the flood, when all the roads in the area were impassable. “A joy finally. Since I lost employment I wanted to work, but I can’t have papers. If I can regularize myself, it will be easier to get a job, ”says the woman.
“Since the Dana everything has been fourth. Who is expected? Everything was paralyzed. I worked, but I stopped working because we lost the car here and everything was stuck, ”says Valentina, who even worked in Turia taking care of an old lady.
“When communications returned, I warned that I couldn’t leave. But when you work in black, they don’t support one at all, ”explains the Venezuelan. “They told me they would then look for another person. They told me that it was not their problem what had happened. I had been working with them for two years, but since I was in black, they couldn’t pay me anything. ”
Valentina’s husband worked without a contract in a restaurant that has remained closed for more than two months. “And all that time we have been without charging either. We have paid the room with savings. And they have helped us with food, ”says the Venezuelan, who has achieved temporary job a few weeks ago.
Oxfam Intermón estimates that between 28,000 and 41,000 migrants in an irregular situation were affected by the DANA and cannot opt for state aid, which pushes them to a situation of extreme vulnerability. The NGO has positively valued the government’s decision, but warns that the registration requirement can leave hundreds of excluded people due to the difficulties that migrants find to carry out such procedure.
“It is very possible that migrated neighbors residing in those municipalities when the Dana were impacted. It is necessary to make this administrative requirement more flexible so that it is not the only way to demonstrate that they resided or worked there and that they have been affected, ”explains Raquel Checa, responsible for the zero inequality program of the NGO.
From Valencia Acull they ask that the government more flexible with the objective that people affected without papers can present another type of proof of their residence in the area, given the difficulty to fulfill this procedure, especially in the municipalities of the province of Valencia. “Other effective residence tests can be presented: such as municipal reports, social cards, children’s schooling documents …”, claims Paco Simón, from the NGO.
Both Valentina and Leydis are registered, but recognize that it is not easy to perform this process. Both are registered in the municipalities where they reside, but not in the concrete floors in which they live, since doing so in the house where they reside was more complicated. “I could do the procedure thanks to the fact that my sister let me register at home, where I lived for a while, but it is very difficult,” says Leydis.
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