Once a Spanish Colony, Hispanic Influence Returning to New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS (Hispanic News) October 12, 2005 — In 1518, a Spanish explorer became the first European to set eyes on the place. Subsequently the French claimed and settled the land New Orleans was founded as a French city in 1718 before ceding it back to the Spanish empire in 1763, a rule that spanned four more decades.

When the Spanish ceded the land back to France in 1801 and when Napoleon sold it to the United States two years later no one imagined a future when Spanish would be commonly spoken on its streets.

Yet, two centuries later, Hispanic influence is re-establishing itself across the Gulf Coast. Immigrant workers are arriving by the thousands. As they labor to rebuild what Hurricane Katrina destroyed, growing murmurs note the region's demographic shift. When all is rebuilt, might Nueva Orleans be a more appropriate name?

Mayor Ray Nagin recently wondered as much, posing a question only a nonwhite mayor could ask with impunity: "How do I ensure that New Orleans is not overrun by Mexican workers?"

The question, posed last week, seems appropriate for a mayor who, knowing a full evacuation of his city would take 72 hours, ordered that the evacuation begin 48 hours before Katrina hit. Then, as now, his concerns are too little too late. If by "overrun" he means get jobs, rebuild infrastructure, settle, attend local schools and seek treatment in local hospitals he cannot ensure it will not happen.

In fact, given the transformed demographics he will experience during his next bid for re-election, he'd do well to phrase his queries a bit more delicately.

I'm of two minds about New Orleans' demographic shift.

On one hand, I enjoy Hispanic influence on a city I'm a sucker for the food, the music and the soccer, not to mention the strong sense of family and culture of hospitality. Then again, I'm generally opposed to illegal immigration and think those labor laws approved by our legislature ought to be obeyed and enforced. To be sure, many Gulf Coast workers are legal immigrants. Many others are illegal immigrants.

As never before, however, the illegal immigrants among them have been enabled by a federal government that has said, both implicitly and explicitly, that laws against hiring illegal immigrants will not be enforced on the Gulf Coast.

If rebuilding New Orleans on land below sea level protected by insufficient levees is a recipe for disaster, so too is encouraging an influx of illegal-immigrant laborers to the city for rebuilding efforts many of them crossing the Mexican border specifically for that work then imagining they will depart after the city is rebuilt.

Many will not leave voluntarily. And the government has created a situation in which it will be quite unjust to demand that they do.

Imagine hiring an illegal immigrant to help dig a swimming pool for your back yard, paying him $8 an hour for two weeks of backbreaking labor, then calling immigration police to arrest him as soon as you've filled your new pool with water. Would that sit right with your conscience?

It's called exploitation.

Some critics say illegal-immigrant laborers are taking jobs that could go to Katrina refugees sitting idle and unemployed in shelters.

Upon careful consideration, criticism doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Construction companies are reportedly paying $15 to $17 an hour for unskilled laborers. Contractors are desperate for more workers, going so far as to send recruits to Atlanta and Houston without great success. Burger King, struggling to reopen all its restaurants, is offering $6,000 signing bonuses for workers.

The jobs are there at inflated wages.

If unemployed Americans who have families that can't move to a disaster area, better prospects for work, and welfare to fall back on are unwilling to flip burgers for $6,000 extra upfront, they surely won't seek jobs cleaning up excrement from the Superdome, toxic waste from the streets or pungent mold from rotted drywall.

So Nueva Orleans it will be.