BlackPerspective.net
Discussing the Diaspora as seen through an internal Black lens
Big Hurricane, So Now Texans Want Illegal Immigrant Workers
September 22nd, 2008
I bet you many of the same people picking up illegal immigrants to go work on the house right now; are the same ones screaming about the “Mexican” invasion and these criminals should get no mercy and should all be deported.
Don’t get me wrong, I take a more moderate view on immigration; I’m neither with wild-eyed far right coocs who think we could or should round 13 million people for deportation, nor am I with the ultra-liberals bleeding hearts who think if we all just hand each other daffodils the world will be in harmony, and we should just have open boarders and no one should be deported.
But I think you should be consistent. Don’t have a hard line when everything is good and you want to vent prejudice and disdain; and then when you need the same people you disdain, now you’re going to use those same “criminals” who you think should all be deported no matter what.
Courtesy of the Associated Press
Legal and illegal, Latinos labor to rebuild Texas
By MONICA RHOR and PETER PRENGAMAN
PASADENA, Texas - All along the Texas coast, Latino immigrants are hauling away fallen trees, slashing through storm-tangled brush, patching punctured roofs.
On working-class corners, on ladders in front of Victorian houses, in the yards of ornate mansions, crews of men in dusty jeans, sturdy workboots and baseball caps are nearly as omnipresent in the post-Hurricane Ike landscape as blue tarps on rooftops.
These workers, who get picked up off the street by homeowners looking for quick, cheap labor, are helping to rebuild the devastated cities of southeast Texas.
Many of them are here illegally. Others are legal residents in need of income after their regular jobs were disrupted by the hurricane.
Ike brought a wide swath of destruction, and with it the prospect of more work, higher wages and a respite from the ever-present threat of deportation. In recent months, many day laborers say, jobs in the Houston area had started to dry up, and police and immigration officials had been cracking down.
“There’s more work now,” Teodoro Alvarado, 20, said Friday in Spanish as he stood on a corner in the gritty Houston suburb of Pasadena where day laborers regularly wait for work. “And I hope more work comes.”
There’s reason to believe it will: After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of Latino immigrants streamed to New Orleans for jobs in construction, carpentry and cleanup.
Since Ike struck Sept. 13, Gerardo Hernandez has been getting jobs lifting trees off driveways and houses, but he usually works as a roofer. A drive through the quaint bayside community of Kemah, where the hurricane lifted the roofs off dozens of boardwalk restaurants and private homes, made him confident there’d be need for his services.
“In the weeks that come, as people get insurance money, I think there will be more work,” Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant who has been in this country four years, said in Spanish.
Along with the promise of fresh jobs, there are fears of abuse and exploitation of workers, and rumors that immigration officials will be poised at job sites to arrest the undocumented. After Katrina, many Latino workers in New Orleans reported cases of unsafe working conditions and employers who cheated them out of money earned.
“These people are going to be getting work, but they will also be the most exploited,” said Annica Gorham, director of the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center, which helps day laborers who have been cheated of wages, injured on the job or working in unsafe conditions. “Day laborers are some of the most vulnerable workers here and across the county.”
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Yobachi Boswell is creator and publisher of BlackPerspecitve.net. I’m a writer, activist and political watcher based in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve also been know to do some spoken word and MCing in my day.
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