Posted on 08/31/2017 5:53:39 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
In the coming weeks, as Houston turns its attention to rebuilding areas devastated by Tropical Storm Harvey, people like Jay De Leon are likely to play an outsized role – if they stay around.
De Leon, 47, owns a small construction business in Houston, and he and his 10 employees do exactly the kind of demolition and refurbishing the city will need. But like a large number of construction workers in Texas, De Leon and most of his workers live in the United States illegally, and that could make things complicated.
However, undocumented immigrants are growing increasingly nervous in Texas because of an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration that has cast a wide net.
De Leon, who has lived in the country for 20 years and has two citizen children, says the changes have spooked the city’s migrant workforce. In recent weeks, he said, one of his employees left the state and another returned to Mexico. Both feared that if they stayed they risked arrest.
Departing workers, he says, pose a problem for Houston in the wake of Harvey, which has killed at least 17 people and caused flood damage to commercial buildings, houses, roads and bridges expected to run into tens of billions of dollars.
“The situation that Houston is going through now with the hurricane is going to be the trial by fire for the Republicans and the governor that approved these radical laws,” De Leon said. “They will need our migrant labor to rebuild the city. I believe that without us it will be impossible.”
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
It is not that easy to get a work permit and it should be made more difficult. At any one time we have over 2 million guest workers in this country at a time when our labor participation rates are the lowest since the 1970s..
They are finally self-identifying.....easier to get them OUT of the USA.
Are you f'ing nuts? The Bracero program was a disaster and set the stage for an invasion of illegal aliens from Mexico. Operation Wetback was part of our response. The Mexicans who came in thru the program did not leave and brought in their relatives. Guest workers don't go home. Ask Germany about its gastarbiters that brought in millions of Turks.
The ‘radical laws’ this illegal refers to were NOT passed in recent days....they have been on the books for a very long time & this person knows he has broken the law-—on a daily basis.
Let him & his employees & his children go back to Mexico & build things there.
You would think that we were totally helpless back before massive illegal immigration.
Houston had no shortage of immigrant workers.
*************
There will be plenty showing up to get in on the money.
Lots of jobs for six months plus as the process begins.
Thanks for pointing those things out. It was a pre-coffee fleeting thought.
Given the antediluvian black unemployment rate in Houston, which is about 30% black, was about 10%, and thousands of small businesses were destroyed, there should be no lack of workers - American workers.
Oh that must be why the Mexican Navy didn’t show up to help rescue survivors (unlike the Cajun Navy:-)
Isn’t this like saying he robbed a Bank 20 Years ago but now he is a great guy?
The democrats say we must destroy the country to save a city.
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