[Mb-civic] Immigrants Rebuilding Gulf Coast Suffer ‘ Third World’ Conditions

[Mha Atma Khalsa]

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2559
Immigrants Rebuilding Gulf Coast Suffer ‘Third
World’ Conditions
by Kari Lydersen 

As businesses reap huge profits from contracts to
clean up and reconstruct the storm-devastated Gulf
Coast, a hidden underclass doing much of the toiling
is underpaid, defrauded and mistreated.

Nov 3 - Immigrant workers, many of them undocumented,
comprise a large portion of the post-Katrina workforce
in the Gulf Coast region. Lured to Mississippi and
Louisiana by contractors promising high wages, housing
and food, many arrive to find those commitments empty.
More than two months after the area was devastated by
the storm, complaints among immigrants are rising.

Workers interviewed by The NewStandard and by rights
advocates attempting to document and improve
conditions have described toiling for long hours
cleaning up toxic mold, sludge and other dangerous
substances like asbestos for low pay and sometimes no
pay at all. They also describe living in squalid
conditions in makeshift dormitories, emergency relief
shelters or on the streets.

Osmond Rafael, 30, came to the US from Tegucigalpa,
Honduras eight months ago, fleeing the poverty and
corruption there. Rafael told TNS he was living in
Plano, Texas when a Spanish-speaking recruiter came to
his apartment and offered him construction work in
Mississippi. The recruiter promised Rafael housing,
food, good pay and "everything" if he came to work for
a construction company called "Gonzales."

Once he got to Mississippi, Rafael said, he found
things much different than promised. He said he was
expected to work about 75 hours a week demolishing a
casino in Biloxi but was never paid overtime. He said
he received about $740 a week for the grueling work,
and when he got sick for four days, his pay was
suspended. He also said that the contractor still owes
him for two weeks of work.

Rafael also said he wasn't given an apartment as the
recruiter had promised, but rather had to sleep in the
streets or in a big workshop with about 70 other men.

Gustavo, 35, another immigrant living in Biloxi, said
the same contractor recruited him in Dallas, Texas and
had not paid him in four weeks. "There's
exploitation," he said, in Spanish. "The company
should pay week by week, but it's been four."

When The NewStandard called the number on the card
that the contractor gave Rafael, it was disconnected.

According to an increasing number of reports filtering
out of the Gulf area, layers of contractors and
subcontractors hired by huge companies and by the
federal government have been operating with
near-impunity in the chaotic reconstruction zones,
bringing in crews of mostly undocumented workers to
labor long hours for low pay. Immigrant rights groups
monitoring the situation on the ground say the
contractors frequently violate minimum-wage and
overtime laws, often failing to provide the workers
housing or adequate safety equipment.

The Texas-based Equal Justice Center and the
Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance are among a
small number of advocacy groups working to publicize
the labor law violations and general exploitation of
immigrant workers in the area. Nikita Williams, who
works at the Equal Justice Center in Mississippi,
about three hours' drive from the coast, said she has
doumented numerous stories of workers not being paid.

"It's been really common," she said. "They keep
working on trust. With their immigration status, they
are afraid, so they just stay quiet and put their
heads down. To make things worse, there is the
language barrier. And most people are from very
low-income families; some don't know how to read or
write."

Equal Justice Center organizer Anita Grabowski
recently met about 35 immigrants who had been working
12-hour days repairing a school in Pass Christian,
Mississippi. She said they too complained of not being
paid.

"They were pulling insulation out from the ceiling
with no safety equipment," she said. "After two weeks,
they told the contractor they refused to go back to
work if they weren't paid. They were owed about $2,000
each, about $70,000 total."

Grabowsky said the immigrants were "working around the
clock" and had no money to buy food. She also said
they were living in tents in "really stressful and
unsanitary conditions."

During a survey of the area, Antonio Vasquez of the
American Friends Service Committee met a group of
immigrants brought in by a North Carolina contractor.

"They had been in a trailer for three weeks and hadn't
had food for three days, because most of them hadn't
been paid," said Vasquez. "A lot of people don't know
what the situation is within this disaster zone. There
are rampant violations of workers' rights and health
conditions."

Ken Haggard, a retired fire captain from Terrebonne,
Oregon volunteering with the Red Cross in New Orleans,
said that near the downtown Red Cross shelter by the
Hotel LeCirque he found a condemned gymnasium where
about 50 Latino immigrants were living in filthy,
rat-infested conditions. During two weeks of daily
visits to the site in late October, he said he
observed police officers preventing other labor
recruiters from approaching the immigrants, but
otherwise doing nothing to help them.

"This is the US, and we're treating people like it's a
Third World nation," Haggard said. "How can we bring
people in from other countries and house them in these
despicable conditions and say that's okay? How can the
health department be allowing this? This is absolute
mistreatment. It's beyond callous; it's totally
immoral."

Contractors have also put workers up in emergency
shelters meant for destitute hurricane victims. As a
result, immigrants displaced by the storms have
suffered an anti-immigrant backlash.

On September 28, US Marshals raided a Red Cross
shelter in Long Beach, Mississippi. According to the
Wall Street Journal, they blocked the exits and
briefly detained about 60 people who looked Hispanic.
The shelter residents, including workers and hurricane
victims, were told they would be put in detention if
they did not leave, as most did the next day.

According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune,
immigration agents raided a worksite at the Belle
Chasse Naval Air Station on October 19, detaining more
than 100 immigrant workers who were building a tent
city there. The raid was executed at the request of US
Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana). The contractor,
BE&K out of Birmingham, Alabama, was a subcontractor
of Halliburton Corp., the Houston-based conglomerate
that has a contract to repair military bases
throughout the area.

The Equal Justice Center has been working to document
violations of labor laws in order to press for
restitution. They note that there are relatively few
immigrants' and workers' rights groups in this part of
the south. They also say it has been difficult to
figure out which companies are involved.

"There are multiple layers of subcontractors," said
Grabowski. "We're tracing them back to the source. The
real problem on the coast is there is no mechanism to
make sure contractors will be held accountable for
paying, period – and then for paying decent
wages."

© 2005 The NewStandard. 


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