Something for this forum to talk about. VERY interesting!
>Latino immigrants, many of them here illegally, will rebuild the Gulf Coast
>-- and stay there.
>
>By Gregory Rodriguez
>Gregory Rodriguez is a contributing editor to The Times and Irvine Senior
>fellow at the New America Foundation.
>
>September 25, 2005
>
>NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and
>impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the
>Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them
>undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New
>Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have
>made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the
>immigration debate.
>
>President Bush has promised that Washington will pick up the greater part of
>the cost for "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever
>seen." To that end, he suspended provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act that
>would have required government contractors to pay prevailing wages in
>Louisiana and devastated parts of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. And the
>Department of Homeland Security has temporarily suspended sanctioning
>employers who hire workers who cannot document their citizenship. The idea
>is to benefit Americans who may have lost everything in the hurricane, but
>the main effect will be to let contractors hire illegal immigrants.
>
>Mexican and Central American laborers are already arriving in southeastern
>Louisiana. One construction firm based in Metairie, La., sent a foreman to
>Houston to round up 150 workers willing to do cleanup work for $15 an hour,
>more than twice their wages in Texas. The men - most of whom are
>undocumented, according to news accounts - live outside New Orleans in
>mobile homes without running water and electricity. The foreman expects them
>to stay "until there's no more work" but "there's going to be a lot of
>construction jobs for a really long time."
>
>Because they are young and lack roots in the United States, many recent
>migrants are ideal for the explosion of construction jobs to come. Those
>living in the U.S. will relocate to the Gulf Coast, while others will come
>from south of the border. Most will not intend to stay where their new jobs
>are, but the longer the jobs last, the more likely they will settle
>permanently. One recent poll of New Orleans evacuees living in Houston
>emergency shelters found that fewer than half intend to return home. In
>part, their places will be taken by the migrant workers. Former President
>Clinton recently hinted as much on NBC's "Meet the Press" when he said New
>Orleans will be resettled with a different population.
>
>It is not the first time that hurricanes and other natural disasters have
>triggered population movements. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch slammed into
>Central America, sending waves of migrants northward. The 2001 earthquakes
>in El Salvador produced similar shifts. The effects of Hurricane Andrew may
>better foretell New Orleans' future. The 1992 storm displaced 250,000
>residents in southeastern Florida. The construction boom that followed
>attracted large numbers of Latin American immigrants, who rebuilt towns such
>as Homestead, whose Latino population has increased by 50% since then.
>
>At the same time, U.S. construction firms have become increasingly reliant
>on Latino immigrant labor. In 1990, only 3.3% of construction workers were
>Mexican immigrants. Ten years later, the number was 8.5%. In 2004, 17% of
>Latino immigrants worked in the business, a higher percentage than in any
>other industry. Nor is this an exclusively Southwest phenomenon. Even before
>Katrina, more and more Latin American immigrant workers were locating in the
>South, with North Carolina and Arkansas incurring the greatest percentage
>gains between 1990 and 2000. This helps explain why 40% of the workers who
>rebuilt the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack were Latino.
>
>Reliance on immigrant labor to complete huge projects is part of U.S.
>history. In the early 19th century, mostly Irish immigrant laborers, who
>worked for as little as 37 1/2 cents an hour, built the Erie Canal, one of
>the greatest engineering feats of its day. Later that century, Italian
>immigrants, sometimes making just $1.50 a day, were the backbone of the
>workforce that constructed the New York subway system. In 1890, 90% of New
>York City's public works employees, and 99% of Chicago's street workers,
>were Italian.
>
>After Congress authorized construction of the transcontinental railroad in
>1862, one of the most ambitious projects in U.S. history, Charles Crocker,
>head of construction for Central Pacific railroad, recognized that the Civil
>War was creating a labor shortage. So he turned to Chinese immigrants to do
>the job. By 1867, 12,000 of Central Pacific's 13,500 workers were Chinese
>immigrants, who were paid between $26 and $35 for a six-day workweek of 12
>hours a day. At the turn of the 20th century, Mexican immigrant laborers did
>most of the railroad construction in Southern California, Arizona, New
>Mexico and Nevada.
>
>Mexican workers were also essential in turning the Southwest into a fertile
>region, which by 1929 produced 40% of the United States' fruits and
>vegetables. They cleared the mesquite brush of south Texas to make room for
>the expansion of agriculture, then played a primary role in the success of
>cotton farming in the state. A generation earlier, German immigrants from
>Russia and Norwegians had busted the prairie sod to turn the grasslands of
>North Dakota into arable fields.
>
>The major difference between then and now is that neither the American
>public nor the government will admit their dependence on a labor force that
>is heavily undocumented. When Mexican President Vicente Fox offered to
>provide Mexican labor to help rebuild New Orleans - "If there is anything
>Mexicans are good at, it is construction," he said - the federal government
>ignored him. At the same time, some of the undocumented Mexicans who have
>cleaned up and begun to rebuild Biloxi, Miss., are wondering whether they
>deserve at least a temporary visa so they can live in the U.S. legally.
>
>Last week, the White House said it will push its plan to allow illegal
>immigrants already in the U.S. to become legal guest workers. Good.
>Hurricane Katrina exposed the nation's black-white divide. Post-Katrina
>reconstruction will soon spotlight the hypocrisy of refusing to grant legal
>status to those who will rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans.
>
In other words, The US government is willing to use undocumented individuals to help them out with the rebuild.
"Remember do what you like because you have to drive it."--Me
