Posted on 10/10/2005 11:37:09 AM PDT by Crackingham
Most of the signs are handwritten and simply worded, such as "Workers Wanted" or "Need 50 Laborers Now!"
Word has gotten out and each morning day laborers — who come from Central America and Mexico by way of California, Texas and Arizona — gather on street corners in the Kenner and Metairie neighborhoods on the western edge of the city. Lured by jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour, the Spanish-speaking day laborers have flooded into New Orleans to haul out debris, clear downed trees, put in drywall and perform other tasks as rebuilding takes hold in the city. Specialized roofers can make $300 a day. Contractors know the new day-labor pickup spots. By noon, a tree-trimming firm hires the last available hand on Williams Boulevard near Interstate 10.
"We've never had Hispanic day laborer sites. That's a totally new phenomenon," said David Ware, a longtime New Orleans immigration lawyer.
With 140,000 homes destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is undergoing the nation's largest reconstruction effort and its new workforce is largely Latino. No one knows how many immigrants have descended here since Katrina ravaged the city five weeks ago, but their presence is visible throughout the city.
Abimael and Filegonia Diaz may have been among the first wave of newcomers. Since Sept. 12, the couple has been clearing debris, washing windows and sweeping floors at a hotel in downtown New Orleans. For six years, Abimael worked in Nashville as a day laborer and sent money to Filegonia and their three young children in Mexico.
"We'll stay here because I think the job will last a long time," Abimael Diaz said. "If we can make enough money, we would like to buy a house and bring our children to New Orleans."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Check out all the Latinos streaming to New Orleans. Who could've guessed?! ;^)
Could El Presidente Vicente Fox have been right?
How do you say Viva la Reconquista in French?
Nagin is a racist. LOL How was Dallas Mr. Mayor?
The illegals will build a city that many long time residents (aka ghetto dwellers) have never worked in for generations.
And just WAIT until they start cooking meals together !!!!
I sent this article to DHS earlier today asking them .....where is ICE? The article even has the name of a contractor in it that is hiring these illegals.
Shameful..................
A father that supports his wife and kids? That is certainly not in keeping with the New Orleans urban culture.
God bless them. Do you think the employers would not hire locals first to do the work if they were willing to fill the positions? Unfortunately, too many New Orleans residents have the feeling that physical labor is beneath them and they choose not to apply for such work. The Latinos who fill those jobs will become the middle class citizens of the rebuilt New Orleans, and they will eventually fill the jobs in the tourism industry when the rebuilding is completed. They will be no different than the waves of Irish, German and other European immigrants who landed in New Orleans in the early decades of the Twentieth Century.
I suspect that it’s a challenge to find a skilled (and sober) Americans to do construction for $17 an hour, much less relocate to NO. 10 years ago, I was told that the illegals hanging out in front of Home Depot in Santa Monica turned down anything under $10 per hour
Once again this seems to demonstrate that poor Hispanic people are willing to work and blacks are not.
I don't believe this is a racial difference. I think it's a cultural difference. Ever since the New Deal, poor urban blacks have been kept on the Democrat plantation and paid not to work. And ever since Selma, Democrats have told blacks that all their problems are Whitey's fault, so they are owed. Why work, when you can get paid for doing nothing, and besides, the white oppressors owe it to them.
In places where the Hispanics have lived long enough, they begin to suck up the same culture, and go on welfare too.
Quick...set the trap....heheheahhaaaa.. its all over but the crying.
I have no problem with Latinos streaming to NO, so long as they are legit immigrants. My only reason for bringing it up is because I've been saying from very shortly after Katrina that the resurrected New Orleans will be totally different from the previous New Orleans, in that the 'working class' will be comprised mainly of Latinos rather than Blacks. This is because I expect the people who left to resettle elsewhere, especially if they are of the 'welfare class' and I expect that the rebuilding will draw in a whole lot of Latinos, because they are such a part of that industry and also many of them have the freedom to go wherever opportunity beckons (obviously, that's why they're here in the first place). A lot of these laborers will stick around, bring their families along eventually, and create a vigorous Latino community in New Orleans. That's what I expect.
I wonder what TexMex Cajun tastes like? :)
So you support the CRIMINAL INVASION?
Anybody who aids and abets criminals are criminals!
Excellent response!
yep
Lots of unemployed factory workers in mid-Ohio..jobs and companies left.
I know a few and suggested a trip south for work and they look at me like I am crazy.
Flame away folks, but SOME Americans don't want the inconvenience of uprooting and the risk of the unknown. SOME immigrants are more than willing to do what it takes to work for a better life.
NOTE..."SOME"
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