New Orleans a Hive of Illegal Worker Bees

Much of New Orleans lies abandoned and destroyed after Hurricane Katrina struck nearly four months ago, but for Latin American immigrants the storm-ravaged city has become a land of opportunity.

While New Orleans residents are slow to return, the immigrants, most of them illegally in the United States, have swarmed in to do the hard work of cleaning up and rebuilding that others so far have shunned.

Read the entire article here.

Starting with the title, Reuters falls (or steps) into the MSM trap of lumping legal and illegal immigrants into one inaccurate group. Oh, they mention the word illegal here and there, but never where it counts.

They are not here because of altruism -- New Orleans is just another place in a strange land to them -- but because there is a huge unfulfilled demand for labor and, as a result, high wages they cannot get in their homeland or in other U.S. cities.

---SNIP---

The pay is good -- "$10, $12, $15 an hour," said Jose Del Rio, 38, from Chihuahua, Mexico -- and there are few problems.

Does anyone, and I mean anyone, actually believe that there are not Americans who will work for $10-$15 an hour?

"Baby, we couldn't do it without them," one of the employers shouted through his truck window.

Couldn't do what? Pick workers up at will without the expense of running ads and the hassle of an interviewing and hiring process? Make even more profits by using workers who can't command the English language, let alone pesky things like employment commitment, benefits, and workers' rights? Sleep in your comfortable beds while you use and throw away the worker who "like most of the immigrants lives in a cheap hotel room with several acquaintances?"

And so far, the authorities have not been too difficult. Local police do not hassle them and immigration agents come around only occasionally, more a nuisance than a danger.

"They came last week and once before that about three weeks ago," Delgado said with a shrug. "They came in cars and took a few people away."

The immigration agents are more a nuisance than a danger? I'd say more of a joke, if they are only taking away a few lawbreakers at a time. The only people they are endangering are those who are in the country legally, by not doing their #$&! jobs.

Mexican Adolf Ramirez, 53, who came to New Orleans from Dallas two months ago, figured the workers were being left alone because the desperate needs in New Orleans had trumped anti-immigrant sentiments now prevalent in the United States.

Just in the title and first paragraph of the article, the author uses the blanket term "immigrant" to erroneously include all immigrants, and singles out "Latin-American immigrants."

May I point out that I have not decried any immigrant who is in the country legally. Not in this post, or any other post I've written. Go back and check it out for yourself. So don't give me any crap about how I'm anti-immigrant or how I single out brown skinned people. It's bullshit. I always say exactly what I mean. Clearly. It's something that so-called journalists should really try on for size in an effort to salvage any remaining vestiges of their journalistic integrity.

When asked where the American workers were, Del Rio shook his head and said, "Who knows? It just seems like the Latin race likes to work more."

Again, who is making this an issue of race?

The immigrant workers do not feel too threatened by competition from the local Americans. They point to the back of the parking lot where the only "gringos" in sight are sleeping on sheets of cardboard or sitting on wooden boxes, surrounded by empty beer cans and booze bottles.

Via merriamwebster.com:

GRINGO
often disparaging : a foreigner in Spain or Latin America especially when of English or American origin

Oh, damn. I must have lost track again and thought I was still in America. I hate when that happens.

Illegal Immigration
America
New Orleans