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Legal and illegal, Latinos labor to rebuild Texas
Homeowners look to them for cleanup; illegal workers fear being cheated
Looking for help to clean up around his storm-damaged house, Dale Emion negotiates with day laborers outside a Home Depot in Houston on Friday. When he offered $7 an hour without lunch, none of the men accepted the work. Then he offered $8 an hour and two men got in the cab of his truck.
updated 48 minutes ago
PASADENA, Texas - All along the Texas coast, Latino immigrants are hauling away fallen trees, slashing through storm-tangled brush, patching punctured roofs.
On working-class corners, on ladders in front of Victorian houses, in the yards of ornate mansions, crews of men in dusty jeans, sturdy workboots and baseball caps are nearly as omnipresent in the post-Hurricane Ike landscape as blue tarps on rooftops.
These workers, who get picked up off the street by homeowners looking for quick, cheap labor, are helping to rebuild the devastated cities of southeast Texas.
Many of them are here illegally. Others are legal residents in need of income after their regular jobs were disrupted by the hurricane.
Ike brought a wide swath of destruction, and with it the prospect of more work, higher wages and a respite from the ever-present threat of deportation. In recent months, many day laborers say, jobs in the Houston area had started to dry up, and police and immigration officials had been cracking down.
"There's more work now," Teodoro Alvarado, 20, said Friday in Spanish as he stood on a corner in the gritty Houston suburb of Pasadena where day laborers regularly wait for work. "And I hope more work comes."
There's reason to believe it will: After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of Latino immigrants streamed to New Orleans for jobs in construction, carpentry and cleanup.
Since Ike struck Sept. 13, Gerardo Hernandez has been getting jobs lifting trees off driveways and houses, but he usually works as a roofer. A drive through the quaint bayside community of Kemah, where the hurricane lifted the roofs off dozens of boardwalk restaurants and private homes, made him confident there'd be need for his services.
"In the weeks that come, as people get insurance money, I think there will be more work," Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant who has been in this country four years, said in Spanish.
Fears of arrests, being exploited
Along with the promise of fresh jobs, there are fears of abuse and exploitation of workers, and rumors that immigration officials will be poised at job sites to arrest the undocumented. After Katrina, many Latino workers in New Orleans reported cases of unsafe working conditions and employers who cheated them out of money earned.
"These people are going to be getting work, but they will also be the most exploited," said Annica Gorham, director of the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center, which helps day laborers who have been cheated of wages, injured on the job or working in unsafe conditions. "Day laborers are some of the most vulnerable workers here and across the county."
In Houston, as in dozens of other U.S. cities, several police departments in the area have started to turn over undocumented immigrants for deportation. There have also been highly publicized workplace raids by federal agents, including one in June where 160 workers at a cluttered rag factory were arrested.
But this city's immigrants, who help make up the country's second-largest population of day laborers after that of Los Angeles, also provide a ready-made work force for the massive cleanup and rebuilding efforts.
"There are plenty of people asking for help," said Marco Ramirez, 50, a contractor who normally has a five-man crew. Since Ike, Ramirez has had to hire extra workers and will likely need more. All, including Ramirez, are Latino immigrants.
"The immigrant people, the Latinos, are the ones who really do the job," said Ramirez, who spoke outside a sprawling home where his men were using chain saws and chains to cut through fallen trees and splintered branches. "We are going to put the city back together."
Homeowners look to them for cleanup; illegal workers fear being cheated
Looking for help to clean up around his storm-damaged house, Dale Emion negotiates with day laborers outside a Home Depot in Houston on Friday. When he offered $7 an hour without lunch, none of the men accepted the work. Then he offered $8 an hour and two men got in the cab of his truck.
updated 48 minutes ago
PASADENA, Texas - All along the Texas coast, Latino immigrants are hauling away fallen trees, slashing through storm-tangled brush, patching punctured roofs.
On working-class corners, on ladders in front of Victorian houses, in the yards of ornate mansions, crews of men in dusty jeans, sturdy workboots and baseball caps are nearly as omnipresent in the post-Hurricane Ike landscape as blue tarps on rooftops.
These workers, who get picked up off the street by homeowners looking for quick, cheap labor, are helping to rebuild the devastated cities of southeast Texas.
Many of them are here illegally. Others are legal residents in need of income after their regular jobs were disrupted by the hurricane.
Ike brought a wide swath of destruction, and with it the prospect of more work, higher wages and a respite from the ever-present threat of deportation. In recent months, many day laborers say, jobs in the Houston area had started to dry up, and police and immigration officials had been cracking down.
"There's more work now," Teodoro Alvarado, 20, said Friday in Spanish as he stood on a corner in the gritty Houston suburb of Pasadena where day laborers regularly wait for work. "And I hope more work comes."
There's reason to believe it will: After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of Latino immigrants streamed to New Orleans for jobs in construction, carpentry and cleanup.
Since Ike struck Sept. 13, Gerardo Hernandez has been getting jobs lifting trees off driveways and houses, but he usually works as a roofer. A drive through the quaint bayside community of Kemah, where the hurricane lifted the roofs off dozens of boardwalk restaurants and private homes, made him confident there'd be need for his services.
"In the weeks that come, as people get insurance money, I think there will be more work," Hernandez, a Mexican immigrant who has been in this country four years, said in Spanish.
Fears of arrests, being exploited
Along with the promise of fresh jobs, there are fears of abuse and exploitation of workers, and rumors that immigration officials will be poised at job sites to arrest the undocumented. After Katrina, many Latino workers in New Orleans reported cases of unsafe working conditions and employers who cheated them out of money earned.
"These people are going to be getting work, but they will also be the most exploited," said Annica Gorham, director of the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center, which helps day laborers who have been cheated of wages, injured on the job or working in unsafe conditions. "Day laborers are some of the most vulnerable workers here and across the county."
In Houston, as in dozens of other U.S. cities, several police departments in the area have started to turn over undocumented immigrants for deportation. There have also been highly publicized workplace raids by federal agents, including one in June where 160 workers at a cluttered rag factory were arrested.
But this city's immigrants, who help make up the country's second-largest population of day laborers after that of Los Angeles, also provide a ready-made work force for the massive cleanup and rebuilding efforts.
"There are plenty of people asking for help," said Marco Ramirez, 50, a contractor who normally has a five-man crew. Since Ike, Ramirez has had to hire extra workers and will likely need more. All, including Ramirez, are Latino immigrants.
"The immigrant people, the Latinos, are the ones who really do the job," said Ramirez, who spoke outside a sprawling home where his men were using chain saws and chains to cut through fallen trees and splintered branches. "We are going to put the city back together."
