Aliens Among Us

An Alabama employment agency that sent 70 laborers and construction workers to job sites in that state in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina says the men were sent home after just two weeks on the job by employers who told them "the Mexicans had arrived" and were willing to work for less.

Linda Swope, who operates Complete Employment Services Inc. in Mobile, Ala., told The Washington Times last week that the workers -- whom she described as U.S. citizens, residents of Alabama and predominantly black -- had been "urgently requested" by contractors hired to rebuild and clear devastated areas of the state, but were told to leave three job sites when the foreign workers showed up.

"After Katrina, our company had 70 workers on the job the first day, but the companies decided they didn't need them anymore because the Mexicans had arrived," Mrs. Swope said. "I assure you it is not true that Americans don't want to work.

Mrs. Swope said employment agencies throughout Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi faced similar problems, when thousands of men from Mexico and several Central and South American countries -- many in crowded buses and trucks -- came into the three states after Katrina, looking for employment and willing to work for less money.

The number of foreign workers who flooded the area after the hurricane has been estimated at more than 30,000. Many of them have been identified by law-enforcement authorities and others as illegal aliens.

Many of the illegal aliens came into the Gulf Coast states not only from south of the border but also from California, Arizona and Texas, responding to the demand for workers. U.S. Border Patrol officials in the three states have reported an increase in the number of illegals apprehended.

Government estimates put at 400,000 the number of jobs lost in the Gulf region as a result of Katrina, which displaced more than 1.5 million people, and many of those workers left the area to seek employment elsewhere because available construction, laborer and cleanup jobs in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi had been filled by foreign workers, including illegal aliens.

Would-be employers in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, awash in cleanup and reconstruction jobs, faced little in the way of legal problems in hiring the illegal aliens after Katrina because the Department of Homeland Security temporarily suspended the sanctioning of employers who hired workers unable to document their citizenship.

"The men we sent to jobs in Alabama were local fellows looking for work, men who needed jobs," Mrs. Swope said. "After driving 50 miles to the work sites where they had been promised $10 an hour, they discovered the employers had found substitutes who were willing to work for less."

There's not much to say to this, except that it turns my stomach.