by Jeff Davis

The word is getting out: there’s a massive clean-up to be done in Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. All levels of skills are needed, from engineers to cooks to construction workers to administrative people. Well, at least there’s a silver lining on the cloud, right? At least the Katrina clean up will be improving the economy by providing jobs for a lot of jobless Americans, right?

Wrong. The Katrina clean up is already turning into one of the biggest boondoggles this country has ever seen, with corporate giants like Halliburton raking in billions of dollars in no-bid Federal contracts. The blacks are still mad about President Bush and Mike Brown leaving them on their flooded rooftops to die. And even the manual labor and semi-skilled jobs aren’t being taken by Americans. There is a flood of illegal aliens, mostly Mexicans, heading towards Louisiana and Mississippi, and they are gobbling up all the labor jobs like a horde of locusts.

One recent article reports “It started out small. But over time, Hurricane Katrina has unleashed a mass of immigrants — some legal, some not… Many are natives of Mexico or Central America, but some come from as far away as Brazil. Hundreds of Latino immigrants could be found last week crammed into the Best Western in downtown New Orleans, where LVI Services, an environmental remediation company based in New York, was packing them in three and four to a room. Hundreds more LVI workers were staying at a Shoney’s Inn in nearby Metairie, said company representatives in New Orleans, who didn’t want to be identified for fear of losing their jobs for talking to reporters. Calls placed to LVI weren’t returned.”

One trailer camp for “Katrina helpers” near Good Hope, Louisiana, just southwest of New Orleans proper is operated by LVI Services. It is nothing more than a row of tractor-trailers crammed with bunks, a long line of portable toilets, a couple of R.V.’s and three tents with striped roofs. Gun-toting private security guards who wear black T-shirts reading “Police” swagger around the camp. It is the ultimate in American privatization. The workers in the camp are bused into New Orleans every day where they clean up the mess, swabbing the mold off walls, ripping the guts out of buildings and removing mountains of soggy debris. They are paid minimum wage, and they have finally been noticed and are stirring up resentment, especially among Louisiana’s large black population, who have traditionally had a lock on labor-intensive employment in the southern part of the state.

“People from other states, we appreciate their help,” said Aubrey D. Cheatham, a union electrician from New Orleans who told the New York Times in a recent interview that he lost his job to lower-paid illegal Hispanic workers from outside Louisiana. “But everybody else is getting work, not us.” It has not escaped the notice of the remaining local population that all the skilled workers from the giant multinational companies like Halliburton that won no-bid Federal contracts are driving big pickup trucks with out-of-state license plates, and all the manual laborers are gabbing in Spanish.

Almost all of the residents of the camp are Mexican nationals, in many cases illegals who have COME FROM MEXICO to cash in on the Katrina bonanza. This boondoggle doesn’t even have the advantage of clearing a significant number of illegals out of the rest of the country as they migrate to where the labor-intensive jobs are. Instead, it is simply drawing more illegals from the Third World like flies to honey. Workers from all over the country have been pouring into Louisiana, some bused in by “contracting companies,” (i.e. temp agencies). Others simply turned up on their own in search of jobs. While nobody seems to know how many are here, there is plenty of work. The federal government is hurling more than $450 million at the problem, just to clean up hurricane debris, never mind rebuilding anything.

A few Louisiana politicians have sluggishly “expressed concerns.” Senator Mary L. Landrieu called for an investigation of federal contractors, whom she said were hiring “low-wage undocumented workers.” And in Kenner, just west of New Orleans, the City Council has passed an emergency ordinance to try to regulate workers’ trailers and tents that have mushroomed all over the city. “We’re trying to be as considerate and compassionate as we can be to our out-of-town guests, but we need to preserve the quality of life for our residents as well,” said Philip J. Ramon, chief of staff for Kenner’s mayor.

In other words, the usual noises. Nothing will be done about the hordes of Mexicans descending on the Katrina area, and no one seriously expects anything to be done. The Federal government is giving away money, corporate America is rushing to the trough and elbowing to get their snouts in, and everything is going to be done on the cheap and with as much featherbedding and corruption as possible. Keep an eye on this situation, folks. We have yet another George W. Bush scandal in the making.