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Officials Are Blind to Abuse Heaped on Gulf Day Laborers

Commentary

By Cecilia Muñoz, New America Media

WASHINGTON, DC - Feb. 9, 2006 - After 17 years working as an advocate for immigrant rights in Washington, you’d think that nothing surprises me anymore. I’ve been in meetings with immigration officials who either don’t understand how much disruption they cause in our communities, or they don’t care. I’ve heard public officials make promises that they don’t intend to keep. I’ve seen government agencies do excellent work, and I’ve seen them at their worst. It takes a lot to astonish me.

But when I heard that the Governor of Louisiana told a Congressional Committee this week that she had no idea that immigrant workers who are rebuilding New Orleans are suffering abuse at the hands of employers, I couldn’t believe my ears. Is it possible that something so obvious to those of us in immigrant communities is so invisible to the Governor of the state where it’s happening? After all, immigrant workers are a presence in the construction industry all across the country.

When day laborers gather at various places in cities all over the country looking for an honest day’s work, many of them end up at construction sites. The industry tells us that without immigrant workers it’s not clear how America’s buildings would get built. When the rebuilding started in the Gulf, we all knew that immigrants would be a part of it.

Immigrants’ hard work in the construction industry comes at a real price, especially for those who don’t have their papers. Far too many employers take advantage of the immigrants who work for them, promising wages that they don’t deliver. Much of the reason that community groups organize day labor centers is to help workers get the wages they have been promised. It happens all over the country.

It seems to be worse in the Gulf Coast. Billions of federal dollars are flowing to big companies that hire contractors, who hire subcontractors, who eventually hire workers to do the rebuilding. There are tent cities in church parking lots in Louisiana and Mississippi filled with workers who have no housing. The Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance told NCLR at one point that they were organizing a food drive so that workers who hadn’t been paid could at least eat. NCLR’s affiliate, Latino Memphis, reports that dozens of workers who traveled hundreds of miles from Tennessee to the Gulf Coast for jobs came back without the wages they had been promised. Another affiliate, CASA of Maryland, filed a lawsuit last week on behalf of workers who had been abused by employers in the Gulf.

This is not an invisible phenomenon. Major media outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, as well as the incredible coverage provided by media in Louisiana and Mississippi, have extensively documented the issue. So how can Governor Blanco not know that it is happening? Are immigrants so invisible even as they play a major role in rebuilding New Orleans?

Governor Blanco isn’t alone. At a meeting last week the U.S. Department of Labor, the government agency responsible for protecting workers’ rights, also told us that they weren’t aware of the scope of the problem. They couldn’t tell us how many workers have filed claims with their agency, or what happens to the claims once they have been filed. With large numbers of immigrant workers and evidence of large-scale abuse, the Department has exactly one bilingual staff person in Mississippi, and one bilingual trainee for the whole state of Louisiana. They have no plans to dedicate additional resources to deal with the crisis for workers in the Gulf. It’s as if we are as invisible to the agency as we are to Governor Blanco.

But immigrants aren’t invisible, because they are being attacked nearly every day on the television and radio airwaves by pundits like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly, who are angered that they do so much hard work in this country. You can hardly turn on your television without seeing someone yelling their outrage about day labor centers or immigrants in general.

What is happening in the Gulf Coast is an exaggerated version of what happens around the country. We benefit from immigrants’ hard work, but we are unwilling to respect their rights or see to it that these are properly enforced. We allow immigrants to work in our country’s most dangerous jobs, yet we deny them access to care or compensation when they are injured. Then we attack them on the airwaves for being here at all.

I’m familiar with that story. But it still surprises me when the people who are supposed to be leading our country fail to see it as well.

Cecilia Muñoz is vice president of the National Council of La Raza’s Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation.