VTMBH Article: Body
The last steel column from Ground Zero was removed May 30, but not the misery of those who lost everything on September 11th.
Many immigrants may not even get to see the remains of their loved ones as they are pressured to pack up and leave the land that gave them so much happiness, and finally, death.
Shefali Agarwala went to New Delhi with the remains of her husband in February. When she returned April 4, the Immigration and Naturalization Service cancelled her H4 visa.
Their reason: she was in India when her husband Alok, an employee at the Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center died.
The H4 visa was valid till 2003, Agarwala said. But the INS officials at Newark airport did not want to see it. They said I have no right to come back to the United States, and I am not eligible for any compensation.
At the airport, she and her eight-year-old son were detained for five hours. The immigration officials finally allowed them out, but after confiscating their passports.
The INS later issued her two tourist visas, valid for six months, for $195 each. The officials also asked her to leave the country before the visas expired. They said she was not eligible for the Patriot Act, which allowed the spouses of those killed on September 11th to stay on till September 11, 2002.
How could one know in advance that the WTC will collapse before going to India? Agarwala asks.
Fortunately, the federal agencies have agreed to pay her compensation. She currently lives with her friend Sonia Ladkat, whose husband Ganesh was also killed.
Ganeshs body is yet to be identified, and Ladkat, who is also on an H4 visa, is unsure about her future after September 11, 2002 will they ask her to leave before they hand over her husbands remains?
Of the 2,823 people who died on September 11, the remains of only 1,092 have been identified. The authorities say it will be years before the city medical examiners office finishes with the 20,000-odd body parts that have been recovered.
A bigger and better tower should be built at the site, said Meena Jerath, who lost her husband Prem.
Prem, whose remains are yet to be identified, was a structural engineer with the Port Authority. He loved the Towers, Jerath said, and believed nothing could destroy them.
The fire force personnel and police who died there are lionized by everybody, said Jerath, who is yet to apply for compensation. But the officials and society are not paying much attention to the civilians who died.
In a New York cemetery, a little space is marked out for Valsa Raju. She was an employee of the Carr Futures on the 92nd floor of Tower One.
A cross marks the grave of the 39-year-old mother of two children. But there are no body parts interned here. Instead they buried the soil from Ground Zero, her brother Salil Joseph said.
Vinod Kumar Parakkatt, 33, left home that fateful day promising his pregnant wife Jayashree he would be back early to take her to a gynecologist.
He never came back. And Parakkatt, now mother of two-month-old Kripa, has not received his remains.
Like Ganesh and Alok, Vinod was on H1 visaand, so, Parakkatt too is not sure what the future holds for her.
Their only hope is Senator Robert Torricelli, who has introduced a bill that would grant green cards to the spouses of the victims.
For the family of Shaheed Mohammed Salman Hamdani, his remains were needed to prove his innocence and heroism. Till those were identified March 21, there were rumors he had links with terrorists.
A Howard Hughes Medical Institute employee at the Rockefeller University, the 23-year-old left his mothers home in Queens at 8:15 a.m. that day. A trained emergency medical technician, he is believed to have rushed to the WTC when he heard the newsand perished there during rescue efforts.
Hamdani came to the United States from Pakistan as a one-year-old. That Sal would rush to the site that horrible Tuesday morning to help his fellow New Yorkers was not a surprise to his colleagues at the university, Universitys Acting President Thomas P. Sakmar said at a memorial service.
At his funeral, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly praised his courage, calling him a true hero.
His mother Talat has initiated a scholarship in his name at the university, for Pakistani-American students to keep her sons memory alive.
And thus do relatives of September 11th victims seek normalcy in the face of uncertainty, clinging on to memories, and hope.
Many immigrants may not even get to see the remains of their loved ones as they are pressured to pack up and leave the land that gave them so much happiness, and finally, death.
Shefali Agarwala went to New Delhi with the remains of her husband in February. When she returned April 4, the Immigration and Naturalization Service cancelled her H4 visa.
Their reason: she was in India when her husband Alok, an employee at the Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center died.
The H4 visa was valid till 2003, Agarwala said. But the INS officials at Newark airport did not want to see it. They said I have no right to come back to the United States, and I am not eligible for any compensation.
At the airport, she and her eight-year-old son were detained for five hours. The immigration officials finally allowed them out, but after confiscating their passports.
The INS later issued her two tourist visas, valid for six months, for $195 each. The officials also asked her to leave the country before the visas expired. They said she was not eligible for the Patriot Act, which allowed the spouses of those killed on September 11th to stay on till September 11, 2002.
How could one know in advance that the WTC will collapse before going to India? Agarwala asks.
Fortunately, the federal agencies have agreed to pay her compensation. She currently lives with her friend Sonia Ladkat, whose husband Ganesh was also killed.
Ganeshs body is yet to be identified, and Ladkat, who is also on an H4 visa, is unsure about her future after September 11, 2002 will they ask her to leave before they hand over her husbands remains?
Of the 2,823 people who died on September 11, the remains of only 1,092 have been identified. The authorities say it will be years before the city medical examiners office finishes with the 20,000-odd body parts that have been recovered.
A bigger and better tower should be built at the site, said Meena Jerath, who lost her husband Prem.
Prem, whose remains are yet to be identified, was a structural engineer with the Port Authority. He loved the Towers, Jerath said, and believed nothing could destroy them.
The fire force personnel and police who died there are lionized by everybody, said Jerath, who is yet to apply for compensation. But the officials and society are not paying much attention to the civilians who died.
In a New York cemetery, a little space is marked out for Valsa Raju. She was an employee of the Carr Futures on the 92nd floor of Tower One.
A cross marks the grave of the 39-year-old mother of two children. But there are no body parts interned here. Instead they buried the soil from Ground Zero, her brother Salil Joseph said.
Vinod Kumar Parakkatt, 33, left home that fateful day promising his pregnant wife Jayashree he would be back early to take her to a gynecologist.
He never came back. And Parakkatt, now mother of two-month-old Kripa, has not received his remains.
Like Ganesh and Alok, Vinod was on H1 visaand, so, Parakkatt too is not sure what the future holds for her.
Their only hope is Senator Robert Torricelli, who has introduced a bill that would grant green cards to the spouses of the victims.
For the family of Shaheed Mohammed Salman Hamdani, his remains were needed to prove his innocence and heroism. Till those were identified March 21, there were rumors he had links with terrorists.
A Howard Hughes Medical Institute employee at the Rockefeller University, the 23-year-old left his mothers home in Queens at 8:15 a.m. that day. A trained emergency medical technician, he is believed to have rushed to the WTC when he heard the newsand perished there during rescue efforts.
Hamdani came to the United States from Pakistan as a one-year-old. That Sal would rush to the site that horrible Tuesday morning to help his fellow New Yorkers was not a surprise to his colleagues at the university, Universitys Acting President Thomas P. Sakmar said at a memorial service.
At his funeral, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly praised his courage, calling him a true hero.
His mother Talat has initiated a scholarship in his name at the university, for Pakistani-American students to keep her sons memory alive.
And thus do relatives of September 11th victims seek normalcy in the face of uncertainty, clinging on to memories, and hope.