Excerpt from March 7, 2008 report of UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants.
III. THE PLIGHT OF MIGRANT WORKERS: THE CASE OF HURRICANE KATRINA
A. Background
88. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans and other areas of the United States Gulf Coast in 2005, several hundred thousand workers, mostly African Americans, lost their jobs and their homes, and many became internally displaced persons (IDPs). Since the storm, these IDPs have faced tremendous structural barriers to returning home and to finding the employment necessary to rebuild their lives. Without housing, they cannot work; without work, they cannot afford housing. Since Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of migrant workers, most of them undocumented, have arrived in the Gulf Coast region to work in the reconstruction zones. They have made up much of the labour to rebuild the area, to keep businesses running and to boost tax revenue. To support their families, migrant workers often work longer hours for less pay than other labourers. For some migrant workers, wages continue to decrease. Jobs are becoming scarcer because the most urgent work, gutting homes and removing debris, is mostly finished.
89. These migrant workers, like their original local counterparts, are finding barriers to safe employment, fair pay, and affordable housing, and in some cases, experience discrimination and exploitation amounting to inhuman and degrading treatment. In fact, many workers are homeless or living in crowded, unsafe and unsanitary conditions, harassed and intimidated by law enforcement, landlords and employers alike.
90. Migrant workers on the Gulf Coast are experiencing an unprecedented level of
exploitation. They often live and work amid substandard conditions, homelessness, poverty,
environmental toxicity, and the constant threat of police and immigration raids, without any guarantee of a fair day’s pay. They also face structural barriers that make it impossible to hold public or private institutions accountable for their mistreatment; most have no political voice.
91. The dramatically increased presence of migrant workers in the region has fuelled local tensions over language barriers, education and health-care needs in a public services system strained by Katrina. The low-wage workers rebuilding New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast are almost entirely people of African, Asian and Hispanic and/or indigenous descent, many of whom are recent migrants from Latin America and Asia and many of whom are not proficient in English. African American residents are often pitted against migrant workers new to the area, with racial and ethnic tensions between marginalized minority groups in the region escalating. Moreover, as some internally displaced persons return to the region, concern is rising that migrant labourers have diminished job prospects for pre-Katrina residents. Day labourers shared stories with the Special Rapporteur about how they are paid less than promised, or not at all. They note that they are trying to rebuild a city that welcomed them when the most dangerous work needed to be done; only to rebuff them as the pace of rebuilding diminishes.
92. The stories of workers across the New Orleans metro area and the Gulf Coast after Katrina are not simply tales of personal plight. They are also stories about institutional responsibility. In the days following the hurricane, certain agencies of the federal Government came under fierce criticism for being slow to act. Yet, in actuality, other parts of the federal Government sprang into action quite quickly with a range of policy initiatives that were breathtaking in their scope and impact on workers.
93. The treatment of workers in New Orleans constitutes a national human rights crisis.
Because these workers are typically migrant, displaced, undocumented, or have temporary work authorization, they have little chance to hold officials and private industry accountable (e.g., many cannot vote, while displaced New Orleanais continue to experience barriers to voting). New Orleans is being rebuilt on the backs of underpaid and unpaid workers perpetuating cycles of poverty that existed pre-Katrina. Hurricane Katrina helped create a situation where there is no Government or private accountability for the creation and maintenance of these inequities. Internally displaced voters have no voice back home, and reconstruction workers are either non-residents or non-citizens. As a result, contractors have free reign to exploit workers, and the Government has felt little pressure to ensure that migrant workers are protected and able to access what is needed to meet basic human needs.
94. As noted above, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families establish workers’ rights to (a) a safe and healthful workplace, (b) compensation for workplace injuries and illnesses, (c) freedom of association and the right to form trade uni*ns and bargain collectively, and (d) equality of conditions and rights for immigrant workers.
95. Immigrant workers, including those who migrated to work in the regions affected by
Katrina, often experience violations of these rights. Lack of familiarity with United States law and language difficulties often prevent them from being aware of their rights as well as specific hazards in their work. Immigrant workers who are undocumented, as many are, risk deportation if they seek to organize to improve conditions. Fear of drawing attention to their immigration status also prevents them from seeking protection from Government authorities for their rights as workers. In 2002, the Supreme Court stripped undocumented workers of any remedies if they are illegally fired for uni*n organizing activity. Under international law, however, undocumented workers are entitled to the same labour rights, including wages owed, protection from discrimination, protection for health and safety on the job and back pay, as are citizens and those working lawfully in a country.
96. Furthermore, pre- and post-Katrina policies and practices of local, state and federal government agencies have had a grossly disproportionate impact on migrants of colour, in violation of the United States Government’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and other human rights norms that the United States has ratified.
B. Institutional responsibility
97. Personal stories recounted to the Special Rapporteur illuminate the commonality of the struggles faced by migrant workers but also the institutional responsibility, and how both policies and practices perpetuate structural and institutional racism and xenophobia. Across the city of New Orleans, workers – both returning internally displaced persons and new migrant workers – list calamities that have become routine: homelessness, wage theft, toxic working conditions, joblessness, police brutality, and layers of bureaucracy. These shared experiences with structural racism unite low-wage workers across racial, ethnic, and industry lines. Thousands of workers now live in the same conditions: they sleep in the homes they are gutting or in abandoned cars that survivors were forced to leave behind; they are packed in motels, sometimes 10 to a room; and they live on the streets. Most migrant workers were promised housing by their employers but quickly found upon arrival that no housing accommodation had been made available. Instead, they were left homeless.
98. By all accounts, state and local governments have turned a blind eye to this dismal housing situation. Although the city depends on migrant workers to act as a flexible, temporary workforce, it also made no arrangements to pro
vide them with temporary housing. As a result, the workers who are rebuilding New Orleans often have nowhere to sleep.
99. The federal Government has sent mixed messages. On the one hand, it relaxed the
immigration law requirements relating to hiring practices, thereby sending a message to
contractors that hiring undocumented workers was permissible if not condoned. On the other
hand, federal authorities failed to assure these workers and their family members that they would not be turned over to immigration authorities.
100. New migrant workers on the Gulf Coast have experienced a range of problems relating to wage theft which include:
- Non-payment of wages for work performed, including overtime
- Payment of wages with cheques that bounce due to insufficient funds
- Inability to identify the employer or contractor in order to pursue claims for unpaid
wages - Subcontractors – often migrants themselves – who want to but cannot pay wages because
they have not been paid by the primary contractor (often a more financially stable white
contractor)
101. These conditions are particularly salient for migrant workers, especially if they are undocumented as they are more easily exploitable. They may be hired for their hard manual labour and then robbed of their legally owed wages. The situation is exacerbated by the complexity of local employment structures. Because there are multiple tiers of subcontractors, often flowing from a handful of primary contractors with federal Government contracts, workers often do not know the identities of their employers. This is typical of the growing contingent of low-wage workers throughout the country. In New Orleans, workers explained that without knowing the identity of their employer, they cannot pursue wage claims against them.
102. Numerous workers have witnessed immigration raids by ICE and local law enforcement
across the city of New Orleans, at large hotels downtown, the bus station, hiring sites across the city, the Superdome, on work sites, in the parking lots of home improvement stores, and even inside homes that workers are gutting or rebuilding. Workers report frequent immigration raids; retaliatory calls to immigration authorities, or threats of such calls, by employers; and collaboration between local law enforcement agents and ICE to the benefit of employers.
103. The lack of labour and human rights enforcement in the Gulf Coast stands in stark contrast to the aggressive tactics employed by local police and ICE, who readily respond to tips from unscrupulous employers who report workers that voice employment-related grievances. As a result, ICE raids on day labourer and other work sites have increased substantially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Both ICE and the Department of Labor have expressed their commitment to developing a process whereby ICE will determine, before deporting any worker detained on the Gulf Coast, whether the worker has any unpaid wage claims. Although ICE and the Department are reportedly engaged in ongoing consultations on this subject, no agreement appears to be in place. Workers live in fear of these tactics every day and most cannot or will not complain for fear of more severe repercussions.
Texas Civil Rights Review 
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