Thread: Immigrants (Illegals) Reshape Post-disaster New Orleans

Immigrants reshape post-disaster New Orleans
By JOHN MORENO GONZALES – 20 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — On Friday nights, day laborers form two lines at a bustling liquor store in the French Quarter: one is to dutifully wire money to their homelands, the other is to buy $2.17 beers that medicate their lives in New Orleans.

"Life is hard here, harder than any place I've been in the U.S.," said Jose Campos, 37, who came here from El Salvador, by way of Florida. He pedaled his bicycle to Unique Grocery, a cavernous establishment off Bourbon Street that offers the wire service through bulletproof glass and tall-boy beers from icy bins.

"It's a dangerous place, a bad place," he said. "But when you can find work, it's all worth it."

In the three years since Hurricane Katrina, immigrant laborers drawn to the construction and service industry jobs created by the storm have transformed this rebuilding city. In an accelerated version of the already rapid Latino migration to the South, they are forging their own support networks, establishing businesses, packing churches and starting families — a process that usually takes a decade or more.

"There's no place in the world like New Orleans in terms of how rapid the population change has been," said Margie McHugh, co-director of immigration integration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think-tank in Washington D.C.

But in a city whose infrastructure already lacked public services to support its pre-Katrina population, let alone a Spanish-speaking pilgrimage, they have also become preferred victims of the city's infamous crime rate. And, far from wives and children, many have wrestled with the Big Easy temptations of alcohol and drugs.

"It's always difficult to be a trailblazer, particularly at a time when New Orleans is still struggling to rebuild from an awful blow," said McHugh.

Since Katrina, the Hispanic population of New Orleans has risen from 15,000, or 3.3 percent of the pre-storm population, to 50,000, 15.2 percent of the current population, according to the New Orleans Economic Development office.

A 2006 study by Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that nearly half the rebuilding work force was Latino. Fifty-four percent were working illegally in the United States, and nearly 90 percent of illegal workers lived in the U.S. before coming to town.
Beyond the statistics, there are the offices of Dr. Kevin Work, who has forged a business by delivering a generation of Latino children to the city: "Thirty to forty deliveries a month," he says.

Work was seeing so many Spanish-speaking patients at the hospital where he worked that he decided to open two prenatal offices with his own money. The doctor, who has hired bilingual staff and learned a few halting Spanish phrases himself, estimates he has delivered more than 1,000 children from immigrant mothers since Katrina struck in August 2005.

He offers payment plans, and those who cannot pay are covered by government programs.

The year before Katrina, Emergency Medicaid expenses were $1.7 million in metro New Orleans. It was the common childbirth benefit used by recent immigrants, but provided no prenatal care. This year the program expanded to include prenatal care and five times as many patients, ballooning costs to $7.8 million.

"By incorporating illegal immigrants into our normal institutions this way, we legitimize their status," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington D.C. think-tank that advocates for stricter immigration policy.

Dawn Love, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Children's Health Insurance Program, said prenatal programs ultimately save taxpayers because healthier infants need fewer services later in life.

Claudia Cruz, 30, came to post-Katrina New Orleans from Honduras, joining her U.S.-born husband, Miguel Vasquez, 41. Cruz leaned back on an examination bed recently, while Work waved a sonogram wand over the slope of her stomach.

"He's eighty-five percent sure it's a girl," she revealed to Vasquez in the waiting room. "If it's another girl, the name's going to be Andrea," he answered, holding his first New Orleans-born daughter, 13-month-old Daneila.

But for every hopeful family, there are others who feel imprisoned by the city.

One is a gaunt, 32-year-old man from Oaxaca, Mexico who spends his days on a dingy mattress, recovering from a bullet wound.

The man, who asked that his name be withheld because he is in the country illegally, was walking from a nearby discount store at the end of a work week. It was an opening for armed robbers who target immigrants because they are known to be paid in cash and are reluctant to report crimes.

After the man fled with his pay, the robbers chased him down his block, into his apartment, and fired three rounds. Two found the living room wall, one, a narrow torso now covered by bandages and scars.

"They were just boys, maybe eighteen," said the victim, who was treated at a local emergency room, where he had no choice but to report the crime.

The New Orleans Police Department is investigating the case, one of a spree of armed robberies against immigrants.

A November study found New Orleans to be the most violent city in America, and the department will be adding a need for more Spanish-speaking officers to a list of needs.

"If we find ways to educate workers, say 'Hey, look, don't carry so much money,'" the crimes against immigrants can be reduced, said Janssen Valencia, a Spanish-speaking officer assigned in September to start an NOPD immigrant outreach.

Valencia has been making the rounds on Spanish radio shows, urging immigrants to report crimes without deportation consequences. He acknowledges that even if immigrants step forward, the department has fewer than a dozen patrol officers who can take an accurate report in Spanish.

"That's just not good enough," said Valencia.

One answer to the language barrier has been an investment in a school that immerses immigrant children in English instruction.

At Esperanza Charter School, no questions are asked about the immigration status of families. The school teaches from kindergarten to 8th grade. The director is lobbying for the district to start a high school and extend the specialized academic path all the way to college.

"This school would not have even been possible before Katrina," Director Melinda Martinez said.

With 60 percent of its students Latino, 30 percent African American and 10 percent white, the school has a waiting list about 15-students deep in each grade. Some never enroll because of the transient lives of their parents.

"Sometimes, a child is never seen or heard from again," said Martinez, who believes the parents were either deported, or packed up for a less-difficult places.

For those who remain in New Orleans, straddling a troubled city and a troubled homeland has led to disillusionment, sometimes dependency.

The director of the Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse for greater New Orleans said the nonprofit had about a half dozen Spanish-speaking clients before Katrina. In the last year, the number increased to 50.

In response, the organization has established yet another Hispanic outreach in New Orleans, this one to educate youth on the dangers of drugs.

"We have young people who have not seen their parents in five years," said Italia Castillo Duran, who directs the effort. "We have parents who have one child here, and another back in their homeland."

At one time, Arturo, 33, dreamed of providing an American future to his daughter, Beberly Esther, 7. But three years after he arrived illegally from Guatemala, construction work has dried up and he has little money to send home.

Arturo, who requested his last name be withheld for fear of deportation, said he has managed to resist the temptations that have consumed others.

"A lot of people start getting addicted. Maybe they have a wife, wondering, waiting," he said. "You can lose your family at home. While you lose yourself in New Orleans."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... QD958K0101

I have to add, this is the primary blueprint for an ethnic takeover of an American city. That New Orleans didn't need a labor supply is not the question but rather how come it became a magnet for illegals?

Soon the jazz New Orleans has been famous for in the city will be drowned out by salsa and mariachi music. The cuisine will be replaced by illegal taco carts and the French Quarter will soon be known as the Hispanic Quarter.
What is sad is that none of these new "immigrants" give a crap about the welfare of their host city; they are there only for personal financial gain, robbing the city and its devastated residents to send remittances home.

But in a city whose infrastructure already lacked public services to support its pre-Katrina population, let alone a Spanish-speaking pilgrimage, they have also become preferred victims of the city's infamous crime rate.

No wonder New Orleans has not recovered from Katrina, it's gotten worse! So "screw" the existing population and cater to uneducated, unskilled illegal aliens?!?!

How about taking care of the AMERICANS who have suffered thru Katrina? Many people helped "rebuild" New Orleans, then they went HOME! They did not stay to become a burden to its citizens like illegal aliens do.

its incredible even when the MSM reports on the growth of the Hispanic population they will reports say about New Orleans that % has gone from 3.3 % to 15 % in just a couple of years and no one and i mean no one will question why and instead those open border advocates will say how lovely it is because we are so welcoming. we are commiting suicide. It's insane. The reason we have this rise has nothing to do with anything legal and natural its illegal immigration!

Soon the jazz New Orleans has been famous for in the city will be drowned out by salsa and mariachi music. The cuisine will be replaced by illegal taco carts and the French Quarter will soon be known as the Hispanic Quarter.
What is sad is that none of these new "immigrants" give a crap about the welfare of their host city; they are there only for personal financial gain, robbing the city and its devastated residents to send remittances home.

Exactly.

New Orleans= Miami west.

Also must mention that on my one trip there...it was like a visit to debauchery. Spent hundreds per nite and had a lovely room....great food......to decend to the streets to wade in puke. I wanted to do the typical things.....have my portrait done by a side walk artist.....listen to music.......it wasn't like that. It was nothing but drunken, low brow life and not fun. I did get wasted and got myself some "things" in the shops.....but I wouldn't put it on the top ten places to go. To be perfectly honest.....I wouldn't recommend it to anyone and have no desire to go again. NOTHING was THAT great to warrent what you had to overlook.

My husband and his brothers have taken a long weekend trip to New Orleans for years. This was the last year they will go, they said it's gone way down hill and will not return.

Illegal baby boom hits Big Easy
'Most violent city in America' hosts exploding alien population

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Posted: December 29, 2008
10:11 pm Eastern


By Chelsea Schilling
© 2008 WorldNetDaily

After the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, illegal aliens flocked to New Orleans from other U.S. cities to find work – but three years after the storm, the most violent city in America is festering with crime while schools are overcrowded and immigrant births are ballooning.

The New Orleans Economic Development office estimates the city's Hispanic population has more than tripled since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. It has risen from 15,000, or 3.3 percent of pre-Katrina residents, to 50,000, or 15 percent of today's population.

Tulane University and the University of California, Berkeley, released a 2006 study revealing that almost half of the city's construction labor force was Hispanic. At least 54 percent were found to be illegal aliens, and 90 percent had lived elsewhere in the U.S. before migrating to New Orleans.

As WND reported earlier, News reports indicate a flood of illegal aliens is moving South from states such as Arizona and Oklahoma – where immigration crackdowns have made life more difficult for them, and the slow housing market has made jobs scarce. In New Orleans, families are multiplying faster than hospitals and schools can accommodate them.

Overcrowded hospitals and schools

The Associated Press interviewed Kevin Work, a doctor who opened new prenatal offices and hired bilingual employees so he could make a living delivering New Orleans' Hispanic babies.

He performs "thirty to forty deliveries a month," he said.

Work told the AP he has helped illegal alien mothers give birth to at least 1,000 babies since the storm hit in August 2005. He said he provides payment plans to help the families afford the births, or they are covered by government programs such as Medicaid.

In 2004, Emergency Medicaid cost taxpayers $1.7 million in Metro New Orleans, according to the report. Now the government program covers five times as many people, and the cost is more than 4.5 times what it used to be – at $7.8 million.

Likewise, schools are having trouble keeping up.

Director Melinda Martinez of a Esperanza Charter School, a taxpayer-funded English-immersion institution in New Orleans, told the AP her elementary school doesn't ask about immigration status.

In May, Esperanza Charter School teacher Judy Flores told Louisiana's WWLTV she would never inquire about whether her students were legal.

"If I knew, I wouldn't tell you," Flores said. "Whether you agree or disagree, politics and that situation is outside of what our job is; our job is to make sure our students learn and feel safe in our environments."

A full 60 percent of Esperanza students are Latino, while 30 percent are black and 10 percent are white. Each class has extensive waiting lists.

Margie McHugh, co-director of immigration integration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, told the Associated Press, "There's no place in the world like New Orleans in terms of how rapid the population change has been."

Soaring crime statistics

Meanwhile, the city's streets have reportedly become some of the most dangerous places in the nation. A study conducted by Congressional Quarterly recently labeled New Orleans the most violent city in the U.S. Likewise, Foreign Policylisted it as third among its top five "murder capitals" of the world – behind only Caracas, Venezuela and Cape Town, South Africa.

Though many studies have not linked New Orleans' crime surge to any specific cause, Foreign Policy attributes the city's high murder rate to "grinding poverty, an inadequate school system, a prevalence of public housing and a high incarceration rate." While New Orleans has always had high crime rates, there were 19,000 reported crimes and 208 murders in 2007 – up from the 134 homicides reported just before the storm. According to FBI crime stats, forcible rape and robberies were up substantially in 2007 as well.

Even during the city's legendary Mardi Gras celebration this year, four people were murdered and a dozen were wounded by gunshots, according to EMS Responder. Foreign Policy reports there has also been a surge of drug-related violence since Hurricane Katrina.

"Since the hurricane struck in 2005, drug dealers have been fighting over a smaller group of users, leading to many killings," it states."On just one four-block stretch of Josephine Street, in the city center, four people were murdered in 2007 and 15 people shot, including a double homicide on Christmas day. A precise murder rate is hard to pinpoint because the population is swelling quickly, approaching its pre-Katrina numbers. Whether you use New Orleans's own figures or the FBI's, however, the city remains the most deadly in the United States, easily surpassing Detroit and Baltimore with 46 and 45 murders per 100,000 people, respectively."

The New Orleans Times-Picayune tracks and maps the city's homicides. The 2008 map shows too many murder victims to count – most of the victims were shot to death.

Jose Campos, 37, from El Salvador, works in New Orleans and regularly wires money home. He told the Associated Press it is a rough place.

"Life is hard here, harder than any place I've been in the U.S.," he said. "It's a dangerous place, a bad place. But when you can find work, it's all worth it."


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