Immigrants testify on exploitation in New Orleans

The International Tribunal on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita took place here from Aug. 29 to Sept. 2. The tribunal was initiated by the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund and was supported by many national and international organizations. The purpose of the tribunal was to expose the multitude of crimes against humanity carried out by the U.S. government on a local, state and federal level.

For a full account of the tribunal, also see the Sept. 13 Workers World article titled “Int’l tribunal on Katrina & Rita: We charge genocide” at www.workers.org.

Two years after the fact and the government continues to viciously assault the people of the region, especially the Black community. The right to return home, the right to a job, and the right to housing and education continue to be under fierce attack in New Orleans today.

Testimony from the people of the region documented the heavy toll of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the community as a result of government neglect.

Road paved by exploitation, not with gold

One section of the tribunal was on labor and two of the testimonies were from Latino immigrants. Their testimony brought out a critical issue with regard to immigration policy today. In addition, their testimony addressed a salient point for the progressive and people’s movement: unity, especially among oppressed people.

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, many construction and cleaning contractors brought in labor from abroad for the extensive cleanup that was desperately needed.

The testimony of these two immigrants at the tribunal exposed the criminal attitudes and practices—not only of the contractors but the government—that were complicit in this policy. What ensued emphatically demonstrates the bankruptcy and horror of an immigration policy that is highly touted by the Bush administration as well as by certain elements in the ruling class. That policy is the so-called guest worker program.

Dennis, who is from Honduras, and Daniel, who is from Peru, came to New Orleans right after the hurricanes. Both were promised that they would be earning tons of money because there was going to be so much well-paid work to clean up the area.

Dennis described how he was paid about $200 a day in the beginning. But there were so many times he was not paid at all, he said. Then one day, after being picked up on a corner where day laborers gathered, one employer kept Dennis for about a month.

“The first week I was paid for two days, the second and third weeks only one day, and the fourth week, I was not paid at all,” Dennis explained. “The boss finally told me I would not be paid anything and if I protested, he was going to call the police. I was scared and did not do anything.”

At one point, Dennis injured his hand so severely he could not move his fingers and was not able to work at all.

Later, after he got out of the situation, Dennis stood on the corner at a Home Depot looking for work. Managers from the store called the police on the workers and armed police arrived in five patrol cars. The workers were not only arrested, Dennis described, but police stole $200 from him. In jail, he said, the Latin@ workers were terrified.

But in a show of tremendous solidarity, it was local African-American organizations that raised the money for their bail, Dennis told the crowd.

‘Impossible to pay back debt’

The other worker that testified, Daniel from Peru, came to New Orleans about a year and a half ago on a visa with the H2B guest worker program. Daniel’s testimony was also very moving, and like all of the testimonies in the four-day tribunal, greatly stirred the audience as well as the judges.

Daniel described how he was led to believe that he would be making lots of money with the cleanup of New Orleans. The H2B program required that he pay for his visa, which cost him a shocking $4,000. Daniel stated that some workers, however, like those from India, have to pay a staggering $20,000 for each visa!

The visas are granted through a lottery. Daniel described how about 800 people applied for 80 visas. “I was a favorite,” Daniel said, “but I didn’t know what I was coming to. To pay the $4,000 I mortgaged my home, thinking that I would recoup the money with all the promises that were made by the recruiter.”

The recruiter promised the workers a good home, with a swimming pool, a television and telephone service. “But when I arrived,” Daniel said, “the reality was totally different.”

Instead, the workers were taken to a motel that was semi-destroyed. That is where they were to live. “They put us eight to a small motel room. We had to fix up the motel at the same time, and they charged us all $50 a week to live there. We were promised 40 hours of work a week but there were so many workers brought in that we worked only 20 to 25 hours a week and were paid only $6 an hour.”

Furthermore, Daniel said, for other jobs there was no transportation provided and workers had to walk to work—no small thing during the heat of the Louisiana summer.

“It became impossible for me to pay my debt. Back home, I was having problems with the bank that had given me my loan.”

As a result of this fraud and exploitation, Daniel began to organize the workers. He was fired from that job for organizing but he has since become a leader of the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity.

Guest worker = enslaved wage worker

The Bush administration launched a new wave of attacks against immigrant workers on Aug. 10. Not able to get the legislation it wanted earlier in Congress, the Bush administration sidestepped Congress by announcing a new round of policies.

Specifically, the Department of Homeland Security in conjunction with the Social Security Administration launched a major escalation of the “no-match” policy. No-match refers to the inconsistencies of Social Security numbers in the government data base with the numbers submitted by workers.

The government announced that it would penalize bosses monetarily if they continued to employ workers whose Social Security numbers did not match government records. Fortunately the AFL-CIO, along with immigrant rights groups, filed a lawsuit against this policy. In an Aug. 31 ruling, a federal judge temporarily barred the Social Security agency from sending out massive numbers of no-match letters to employers.

Obviously, the U.S. government does not mean to shut down the countless industries whose profits depend on immigrant labor. Instead, what the government and the capitalist class aim to do is make immigrant labor more manageable and more controllable and therefore more profitable.

David Bacon, a well-known progressive journalist who has written on the immigration issue for decades, comments on this current policy: “The impact [of the Department of Homeland Security announcement] will be catastrophic.” Bacon documents how this no-match policy has been used to bust up union drives such as the horrible terrorist attack raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) teams at the Smithfield pork slaughterhouse factory in Tar Heel, N.C., and the Woodfin Suites campaign in California.

Bacon also illuminates what is behind the escalation of the no-match policy. The journalist writes, “Employers worried about the loss of their workers, Commerce Secretary Gutierrez said, could avail themselves of existing guest worker programs, which allow corporations to recruit workers outside the U.S. and bring them in on visas tied to employment.”

The aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is one illustration that shows how the guest worker program is used to “enslave” workers.

In February, Daniel’s organization—Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity—exposed that close to 100 Mexican guest workers had been trapped for months in Westlake, La. The boss had illegally confiscated their passports—a common practice.

Workers were again recruited under false pretenses and treated to humiliating conditions. The campaign to expose these conditions was led by both Latin@ and African-American community leaders.

In Mississippi, immigrants and their supporters report that once they are no longer needed to clean up the area, Latin@ workers are now being threatened and harassed.

One Latina, forced to walk to a doctor’s appointment in the August heat, took up an offer for a ride from a male stranger. “When the police stopped them,” she says, “they let the driver go, but charged me with prostitution.”

Seeds of victory in soil of exploitation

The ruling class has successfully managed to drive down living conditions for the most oppressed workers in a way that can make heads spin. In addition, in every single facet of life, the community of New Orleans and all the Gulf Coast is being brutally and inhumanely hit. The horror the world saw in August of 2005 continues today in the wake of “Hurricane U.S. government.”

But the tribunal and the work that is being carried out every day to win justice for Katrina survivors show that people are fighting back against these attacks. During the tribunal, for example, this writer was able to tour the work being carried out by Common Ground Collective in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. This work shows that despite the hardships and the government onslaught people are organizing and fighting back.

Immigrants, too, are not just lying down.

Daniel’s final words to the tribunal audience show what is on the horizon: a solidarity and unity between the oppressed that is so mighty and powerful that when it is organized, it can bring the system down.

Daniel said, “When I came to New Orleans, I saw Black people on the corner just hanging out. When I asked why they were not given these jobs, my sister and others told me that Black people were lazy. I have since learned this is not true.

“I want to develop relations among Latinos and African Americans so that we can build a real alliance and go forward. They have manipulated both our peoples: they tell us you are lazy and they tell you we steal your jobs. But we are brothers and sisters and we have to live together so we can all go forward.”