Jefferson Parish received mostly wind damage from Katrina, with the notable exception of the Aaron Broussard flood plain, so as the closest parish to Orleans, it became the headquarters for New Orleans recovery. Since Katrina, over 30,000 illegal aliens have flooded the New Orleans area, and over 100,000 to the entire Gulf Coast. It has been a source of controversy since they started arriving – soon after President Bush suspended the Davis Bacon Act and big companies with government contracts wanted cheap labor. Where illegal aliens are concerned, it’s taxpayer subsidized labor, and now two years later, local businesses who hire Americans are having a hard time competing with companies who hire illegals for far less.
This quote from CNN was prophetic:
LAWRENCE: About 3 percent of New Orleans was Hispanic in the last census, but companies have placed ads for workers in heavily Latino areas of Atlanta, Chicago and Houston. Now, immigrant workers are getting paid and starting to send that money back home. Immigration expert Jack Kyser says, you could look at California’s history for a preview of what comes next. So this first group of Latino workers will more than likely reach back into their community to bring in more?
JACK KYSER, L.A. CITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORP.: The word gets out on the street, so more people start to come in, more workers, and then, if these workers sense this is going to be a permanent opportunity, they will start to send for family, for the wife, for the children.
LAWRENCE: And that’s how new communities are born. And possibly, a new New Orleans.
A nuevo New Orleans, to be accurate. Ray Nagin’s chocolate city is now a flan city. And the surrounding parishes are affected as well. Emergency rooms are full, people are starting to grasp what this is doing to a school system that was in terrible shape even before Katrina, and “day labor centers” are de rigeur at every Home Depot, Lowes, and quite a few gas stations. Drunk driving has increased. My mother and daughter were hit by an illegal alien drunk driver last August. There is a slight pushback from local government. One section of Jefferson Parish is getting a reputation for Driving While Latino stops – it’s a section heavily populated by these “newcomer” “undocumented Americans” and has had a rash of DWI incidents in the last two years. They tack onto that the charge of “driving illegally in the U.S.” And now Jefferson Parish seems to be cracking down on the taqueria trucks that have become a fixture at many intersections.
The Jefferson Parish Council today approved tighter regulations for vendors selling food from temporary stands or vehicles, effectively stopping the taqueria trucks that arrived after Hurricane Katrina from operating in their current form.
The new rules, which go into force in 10 days, bar food trucks from areas along many major streets in Jefferson Parish, limiting them to heavy commercial and industrial zones. And the rules require vendors to provide permanent restrooms, which typically are not available at the trucks that sell Latin American food to workers who came to the New Orleans area for Katrina rebuilding jobs.
Since the federal government flatly refuses to do anything about illegal immigration, if anything gets done at all it will be at the local level. Getting rid of these trucks is a good start; we can’t deport people directly but we can stop enabling them, at least. Now if they would just crack down on the employers!
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I think you are right about the Feds doing anything about illegal aliens. It will be up to the States, but more likely to individual communities.
Thanks for the trackback, as always.