Who Is Rebuilding New Orleans?
Thousands from Mexico and Central America are rushing to New Orleans where work is easy to find and no one is checking illegal workers' documentation.
"Thousands of men from Mexico and Central America were driving into the city. Word had spread throughout the Latino immigrant diaspora in America that the city had plenty of work, construction wages had doubled to $16 an hour and no one was asking for papers...
Latino workers have gutted, roofed and painted houses and hauled away garbage, debris and downed trees. Undocumented workers have installed trailers to house returning evacuees at New Orleans City Park, their pay coming from FEMA subcontractors...these immigrants offer another reminder of the country's reliance on undocumented labor from Latin America.
As New Orleans redefines itself after Katrina, the influx of large numbers of Latino immigrants is another jolt for a city that has historically thought of itself as black and white...Some blacks see the thousands of Latino immigrants as usurpers who've come for jobs they once had, now that wages have risen and black workers are displaced."
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Ridiculous...
This is a choice quote from in the article:
"There are thousands of blacks that are still out of town who can't get back to town because there's no housing," said Elaine Smiley, an African American, as she oversaw the renovation of her home in the Gentilly neighborhood. "If we had enough of those blacks back here, they could do the work."
"I don't have anything against [Mexicans] being here," she said as five workers pounded shingles on her roof. "But I don't think they should be getting as much work as they're getting."
As though somehow the mexicans that went there happened to have all this money to be able to make it to new orleans and take up the precious remaining housing and jobs. They make whatever sacrifice that they can to work often without ANY worker protections because they are "illegal". I was just there for 3 days for business and there are help wanted signs ALL OVER TOWN. Its not a place that is hurting for jobs.
It just smells of racism - "those" people shouldn't be working, "my" people should. And the fact that a minority is saying those words makes ever more ridiculous..