Thread: Invaders flee New Orleans to squat, steal jobs in Tennessee

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Convoy to Tennessee
Brings Immigrants
To Shelter After Storm
Workers Escaping Katrina
Quickly Find Jobs, Homes
Through Latino Network

By MIRIAM JORDAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 19, 2005; Page A1

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Like tens of thousands of New Orleans residents, Fredi Escobar fled the city on Aug. 28 with little more than the shirt on his back.

By the second week in September, after a 800-mile journey that first took him to Texas, Mr. Escobar had rented an apartment here and secured a job as an auto mechanic. "This is all we wanted -- to work and get on with our lives," says Mr. Escobar, 32, heading home recently to have dinner with his wife.

This rapid rebound sets Mr. Escobar apart from thousands of evacuees who are still in shelters and surviving on aid from government agencies, churches and other organizations. Something else distinguishes him too: Mr. Escobar is an illegal immigrant.

Among those whose lives were torn apart by Hurricane Katrina are legions of undocumented workers who supported the service economy along the Gulf Coast. No reliable statistics exist on the number of undocumented immigrants, though a total of up to 300,000 Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans were living in the storm-damaged areas, according to estimates by those countries' consulates.

Lacking assured access to government aid and fearful of being deported, many illegal immigrants are drawing on family, friends and the Latino community to help them rebuild their lives. As Mr. Escobar's zigzag journey demonstrates, these migrants are often adept at dealing with adversity. Although some yearn to return to New Orleans, they are motivated to find jobs quickly because they typically provide a financial lifeline for relatives back home. Less than a week after arriving in Nashville, Mr. Escobar and most of the 20 or so friends who joined his convoy of seven cars from New Orleans found work and housing.

Before Hurricane Katrina struck on Aug. 29, Mr. Escobar had called New Orleans home for three years. He came to the U.S. seeking prosperity for his family, and after crossing the border, he headed for New Orleans because his stepfather was already there. He says he scrubbed the floors of the upscale Canal Place mall for $6.50 an hour -- more than he could earn in a whole day working as a mechanic in his hometown of San Marcos, Guatemala. The money he wired home allowed his family to build a cottage, which he has never seen. His three daughters live there with a grandmother.

Partly to boost their savings more quickly, Mr. Escobar paid $4,000 to a "coyote" -- a person who smuggles immigrants across the border -- to get his wife, Dominga Monterrosa, into the U.S. six months ago. In New Orleans, Ms. Monterrosa took a day job as a housekeeper at the Hilton Garden Inn. By night, she cleaned offices. On average, she slept four hours a night. "We are here to work hard," she says. "It's for our children."

When she and a friend, Edilma de Léon, reported for work at the hotel on Sunday, Aug. 28, at 8 a.m., their supervisor was delighted: With Hurricane Katrina fast approaching, and local officials urging a rapid evacuation of the city, none of the other 12 maids had shown up. For four hours, they went about their jobs making beds and swabbing toilets.

Back home, Mr. Escobar and Mrs. de Léon's husband, Miguel, decided it was time to heed pleas to evacuate. The men hurried over to the hotel to fetch their wives. The four immediately joined a group of Guatemalans who had arranged to hit the road together, 30 in all. The group had only two children; most parents in the group have left children in Guatemala.

It was just early afternoon in New Orleans. But the sky was dark and the winds shrieking when the Guatemalans piled into their cars and hit the freeway, in a caravan crawling toward Houston, like thousands of other refugees. They rode in Mr. Escobar's late-1980s Toyota Corolla, taking 15 hours to drive 270 miles to Beaumont, Texas, which turned out to be a popular stop for evacuees.

Unable to secure motel rooms and bewildered by the scene at an overcrowded Salvation Army shelter, the group eventually took refuge at North End Baptist Church in Beaumont. They were the only Latinos there among about 100 or so refugees.

At first, the group's priority was to call relatives in Guatemala and let them know that they were safe. Then, the plan was to wait out the storm and return to their adopted home. "We were under the illusion that we'd go back to New Orleans in a few days," says Lorena Bautista, one of the women in the group. She is currently alone in the U.S., because her husband returned to Guatemala earlier this year for a family emergency and hasn't made it back across the border into the U.S.

After a couple of days in Beaumont, it became apparent that they wouldn't be able to return to New Orleans for weeks or months. Despair began to set in, says Ms. Bautista, whose three daughters in Guatemala rely on her monthly stipend to pay for food, clothing and schooling. Most of the immigrants had left New Orleans without receiving their last two weeks of pay. They had no bank account from which to draw cash.

Linda Buser, a worker from the Beaumont church, drove them to the state health and human services office, where hurricane evacuees were receiving assistance, such as food stamps. She helped them fill out the paper work, she recalls.

Five hours later, a clerk called out Mr. Escobar's name over the loudspeaker. He recalls that she told him, "Sorry. No green card, no help." Mr. Escobar's friends got the same message from other attendants.

Illegal immigrants affected by the hurricane are entitled to emergency food, shelter and medical care from the U.S. government. But they aren't eligible for any recovery assistance, such as a $2,000 cash stipend offered to other refugees or hotel reimbursements, according to a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The only exception: parents of a U.S.-born child, who can receive some federal disaster assistance. FEMA has been telling undocumented immigrants to try getting help from nonprofit organizations, such as faith-based and community groups.

At the church, Pastor Robert Miller recalls watching the immigrants gather for a group meeting to plan their next step. He tried to persuade them to stay at the church a few more days to rest and recuperate. "They were very motivated to move on," he says.

The Escobars and their friends made a flurry of calls, sharing two mobile phones among each other. The calls resulted in invitations to join relatives in Georgia, Florida and Oregon. But "we were afraid of getting lost," says Mr. Escobar, who has six years of schooling and speaks broken English. In the end, 27 of the 30 members of the group decided to follow Jose Guzman, the most trusted map reader in the group, to Nashville, where he had friends.

The church gave each driver $200 for gas. It also gave each person $40 and a decorated shoe box containing shampoo, deodorant and other personal-hygiene items. Under the lid, a handwritten note signed by "Heather B." wished them well as they sought to start their lives anew. When the group bid farewell to the church staff, "they asked us to pray for them to find work," recalls Cristina Vargas, a Beaumont resident who interpreted for the group during its stay there.

During the 17-hour journey to Tennessee, the convoy moved slowly. To their relief, they didn't encounter immigration officials or get stopped by highway patrol. A Mexican-American man replaced a flat tire free of charge after hearing they were hurricane evacuees.

Fighting colds and fatigue, they arrived on the edge of Nashville on Sunday, Sept. 4 -- a week after abandoning New Orleans. They threw down some blankets and stretched out to sleep on the floor at the tiny house of Mr. Guzman's friends. On Monday, they arose to a Spanish-language radio station's call for Latinos to take part in a Labor Day fund-raiser for hurricane evacuees.

Moved by news reports that undocumented immigrants had few places to turn for help, about 2,000 Hispanics showed up with everything from lampshades and dinner plates to disposable diapers and cases of drinking water. They lined up to donate as little as $1 and as much as a day's pay. Most of them were also believed to be illegal immigrants, according to community leaders.

"These were poor people answering a call to help other poor people," says Wendy Silva, owner of the small independent radio station, La Sabrosita, which caters to a Mexican crowd seeking tejano music, a kind of Mexican equivalent of country. In a parking lot in Nashville's Latino enclave, local Mexican bands played. Tacos, drinks and T-shirts were on sale to raise money for hurricane victims.

Amid the raucous event, about 15 of the Guatemalan evacuees showed up, becoming instant stars. The radio station broadcast their arrival and interviewed Mr. Escobar, who thanked God for being alive and for the warm reception from the local Hispanic community. The Spanish-language biweekly newspaper, La Voz, clicked pictures of the group for the next edition. Finally, Ms. Silva and La Voz publisher Luis Mascorro handed each couple about $300 from funds raised that day.

Later, two trailers left Nashville carrying the goods and about $10,000 in cash collected at the fund-raiser, to be distributed mainly to Latinos in the ravaged Gulf coast.

Antonio Cabrera, a Mexican bricklayer who donated canned soup and bottled water that he had bought at Kmart, offered to house seven of the Guatemalan evacuees in his mobile home. Other families took in other members of the group. "I want Latinos to know they're not alone," he says.

Among those who heard about the newcomers was Santa Perez, a 58-year-old restaurateur and green-card holder, who came to the U.S. about 30 years ago from Mexico. "I know what it's like to cross rivers," she says. "Many people helped me get started. They opened doors for me." She invited the Escobars and their friends to her Mexican restaurant, El Arroyo, for a feast of tamales, carnita, beans and rice.

Mrs. Perez had been thinking about donating $4,000 to the Red Cross but decided to use it to help the Guatemalan group. She paid the first month's rent, or $589, for each of four apartments to house the immigrants, then bought new beds for them. The apartments were furnished with tables, chairs and lamps donated at the fund-raiser. Food came from churches frequented by Latinos.

Nashville's Hispanic population has grown rapidly since the 1990s, drawn by opportunities in the city's tourism industry and its construction boom. Official figures put the number of Latinos at 40,000, but community leaders estimate it is at least twice as large.

Local Latinos stepped forward with information about jobs. Ms. Bautista and five other Guatemalan women were taken to a local job fair and directed to a plant in nearby La Vergne that manufactures and distributes DVDs and other disks. Within two days of arriving in Nashville, they had jobs packing DVDs.

Several men in the group soon found work on construction sites, as they had in New Orleans. A phone call placed by a local resident helped Mr. Escobar land a job as a mechanic at a car-repair shop, after initially being offered a cleaning job at a Hispanic-run bus company.

Despite the rapid resettlement, the group's long-term prospects are far from sorted out. For one thing, Nashville's open arms haven't made them forget the home they left in New Orleans. Ms. Bautista and some other friends of Mr. Escobar were on the verge of signing a lease for an apartment when she blurted out that she wasn't certain about committing to a six-month contract.

"I want to go back to New Orleans in three months," said Ms. Bautista, burying her face in her arms.

Others can't afford to look back. In their new apartment in the heart of Nashville's Latino section, known as Nolensville Road, Ms. Monterrosa, the wife of Mr. Escobar, says she is keen to use the newly installed telephone to search for work. She had a shot at a job in a computer-assembly plant, but it was 40 minutes away and there was no bus service that could get her there. Back home, "our families need our money to eat," she says.

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com
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Something else distinguishes him too: Mr. Escobar is an illegal immigrant.

I notice a few deportation opportunities have been missed.