Immigrants and Hurricane Katrina

I recently had occasion to visit New Orleans, my first visit there since August 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. Conditions remain bad there. Many others have documented the misery in the region and I will not repeat what has been said here.  Professor Bill Quigley (Loyola) has a nice power point on the city 18 months after Katrina (click here).  Eleven UC Davis law students joined other law students during spring break to help provide legal assistance to persons victimized by the hurricane.  For their blog, with pictures, click here.

As has been reported often, many Mexican migrants have moved to the region to labor in the reconstruction efforts.  Unfortunately, they have not always been warmly received.  Indeed, as in many cities across the United States, immigrant/African American conflict has been on the rise.  That is what I wanted to talk about on this blog today.

The rebuilding of New Orleans – and the ready availability of jobs – attracted many Latina/o immigrants to the Big Easy, especially in the construction industries. Not long after the hurricane hit, President Bush suspended the minimum wage laws applicable to federally financed reconstruction projects, which presumably drove down wages, increased the demand for labor, and brought more migrants to the Gulf region. The Department of Homeland Security announced that it would not enforce the employers sanctions provisions of the immigration laws that bar employment of undocumented immigrants. As is characteristic of the treatment of undocumented labor in the United States, many workers were exploited by employers and paid low wages to work for long hours in poor, often unsafe, conditions, and found themselves in substandard and unhealthy housing. Several reports documented the shoddy treatment of immigrant labor rebuilding New Orleans. See, for example, Advancement Project, National Immigration Law Center, & New Orleans Worker Justice Coalition, And Injustice for All: Workers’ Lives in the Reconstruction of New Orleans (2006); Tomás Aguilar with Laura Podolsky, Risk Amid Occupational and Safety of Latino Immigrant Workers in the Aftermath of the Gulf Coast Hurricanes (June 2006) (documenting health and safety risks experienced by Latina/o immigrant workers in the reconstruction efforts). It was estimated that more than half of the reconstruction workforce was undocumented who, along with other workers, “are vulnerable to exploitation by their employers because of inadequate legal protection and the failure on the part of the federal and local authorities to monitor construction sites.” More than one-third of the undocumented workers surveyed reported receiving less money than they expected to be paid. Less than half of all workers had health insurance and the undocumented workers are very unlikely to seek medical treatment.

In essence, Latina/o immigrant workers suffered exploitation and received little assistance from the government. At the same time, they were vilified by the public and policy-makers as part of the Hurricane Katrina “problem,” as opposed to part of the solution.  Rather than encouraging immigrants to help in the rebuilding efforts, a backlash emerged over the feared Latinization of the Gulf region. Indeed, no doubt responding to citizen complaints, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu asked the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to investigate the use of undocumented immigrants by contractors in the Hurricane Katrina rebuilding effort; ICE responded by detaining immigrant workers. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin expressed fear about the future prospects of his city: “How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?” Coming from a prominent African American political leader, this statement tapped into a history of anti-immigrant sentiment.

It, of course, is evident that the region had been changing demographically and that a rebuilt Gulf region might accelerate the changes, rendering it different from that which existed before Hurricane Katrina. Outside the Gulf region, New Orleans was characterized tongue-in-cheek as La Nueva (The New) Orleans as African Americans fled the devastation of the town while Latina/o workers moved there to rebuild the city.

Conflicts between African Americans and immigrants, particularly Latina/o immigrants, unfortunately are nothing new. It re-emerged in parts of the South, which for the first time in recent years had seen substantial Latina/o immigration. African Americans long have worried (understandably) about the negative impacts of immigration on their community. Recent years had sporadic incidents of friction between African Americans and Latino immigrants. Stresses in society are likely to bring such tensions to the surface. It is not surprising then that the immigrants who came to New Orleans to help rebuild were accused of taking jobs from African Americans, as well as threatening the future racial identity of the city.

Interracial conflict in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina also could be seen in the protest over media characterization of the persons who fled New Orleans as “refugees.” Jesse Jackson bluntly declared that the classification of Black citizens as “refugees” was “racist.” One displaced person from New Orleans emphasized on an NPR show that

I am not a “refugee.” I wasn’t shipped here. . . .We are not refugees. You hold your head up. We are United States citizens, and you be proud of that. A lot of us are taxpaying, honest, hardworking people. I’m like, when did I come from another country? That’s what they used to call people that was in boats, and that was sneaking over here. I am a survivor. They need to say, “the survivors of Katrina.”

The President agreed that refugees was not the proper term to describe persons fleeing the Gulf region. The controversy over terminology lingered. The angry response at some level amounted to the claim from Black America that “we are citizens deserving of assistance, not foreigners who do not.” The claim in effect was that citizenship bestowed superior rights over those possessed by noncitizens in the wake of a mass disaster. In demanding the full benefits of citizenship, the African American community consciously distanced itself from immigrants and, at some level, played on nativist sympathies.

Ultimately, the stress of the mass disaster drove apart two minority communities that, in certain ways, need each other – and will need each other more in the future if they hope to secure mutually beneficial social change. As it has been for generations, at the heart of the friction between African Americans and Latina/o immigrants is a struggle for economic survival and social membership. Rather than efforts by government to calm the tensions, leading governmental officials made matters worse by vocally attacking immigrant workers for threatening African Americans economically, socially, and politically.

One of the unaddressed problems is that nativism exists within the African American community, just as anti-Black sentiment can be found among some Latina/os. Such biases unfortunately led to conflict. Conflict often comes to the fore in times of societal stress, such as after September 11 or Hurricane Katrina. It is essential that communities of color address these issues if there is any hope of building multiracial coalitions for social change.

There is some reason for hope, however.  New Orleans has not been deserted and parts are up-and-running in a somewhat “normal” fashion.  And many leaders are committed to its reconstruction.   For example, the President of Loyola New Orleans, the Reverend Kevin Wildes, in recent weeks has held well-attended community forums on racism and immigration.  The clinics at Loyola Law School has been operating and, through students and professors (like Luz Molina), have been providing much-meeded assistance to immigrants and others in need.

Nonetheless. it seems clear that the reconstruction of New Orleans will require years of work at many different levels.  It is difficult work yet important work.

KJ