From a trickle to a flood
On Friday nights, day laborers form two linesat a bustling liquor store in the French Quarter: one is to dutifullywire money to their homelands, the other is to buy $2.17 beers thatmedicate their lives in New Orleans.
“Lifeis hard here, harder than any place I’ve been in the U.S.,” said JoseCampos, 37, who came here from El Salvador, by way of Florida. He rodeis bike to Unique Grocery, a cavernous establishment off Bourbon Streetthat offers the wire service through bulletproof glass and tall-boybeers 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 jobscreated by the storm have transformed this rebuilding city. In anaccelerated 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 adecade or more.
“There’sno place in the world like New Orleans in terms of how rapid thepopulation change has been,” said Margie McHugh, co-director ofimmigration integration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, anonpartisan think-tank in Washington D.C.
Butin a city whose infrastructure already lacked public services tosupport its pre-Katrina population, let alone a Spanish-speakingpilgrimage, they have also become preferred victims of the city’sinfamous crime rate. And, far from wives and children, many havewrestled with the Big Easy temptations of alcohol and drugs.
“It’salways difficult to be a trailblazer, particularly at a time when NewOrleans is still struggling to rebuild from an awful blow,” said McHugh.