BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. – By October, Tim Nguyen found that his work in a Mississippi shipyard was no longer paying the bills. His hours had been cut back, part of the general ebb of work along the Gulf Coast after the terrible summer of BP. Mr. Nguyen went to an office of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which was set up to administer BP’s $20 billion fund for coastal businesses and residents. He was told he could not file a claim. A law firm he had never heard of had already filed one in his name. “I never signed up with anybody,” he said. In the six months since, Mr. Nguyen, 43, has been in limbo, suspended between the law firm and the claims facility. He has yet to receive a dime. The 30,000 or so Vietnamese-Americans living along the Gulf Coast, many of whom have few resources outside of their boats and bare hands, know about life at the mercy of nature. But a year ago this week, they began learning a far more frustrating kind of vulnerability: put out of work by an energy giant, they turned for help to a claims system that many found to be opaque and unresponsive. For people ...
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