Hurricane Chasers: An Immigrant Work Force on the Trail of Extreme Weather
Hurricane Chasers: An Immigrant Work Force on the Trail of Extreme Weather
Itinerant, largely undocumented workers devoted to hurricane recovery in the U.S. have endured shabby housing and haphazard payments.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/us/hurricane-undocumented-immigrants-workers.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
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The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.2 million Americans live in coastal areas at risk of significant damage from hurricanes. The increased frequency and severity of such disasters have given rise to a new recovery-and-reconstruction work force.
It is overwhelmingly made up of immigrants.
Like the migrant farmworkers of yesteryear who followed the crops, the hurricane workers move from disaster to disaster. They descended on New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; Houston after Harvey; North Carolina after Florence; Florida after Irma and Michael. And as the United States confronts more extreme weather caused by climate change, theirs has become a growth industry.
Lorenzo, a 67-year-old from Mexico, is adept at elevating and moving houses to higher ground, and keeps pictures on his cellphone to prove it — mansions he rescued in New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Houston.
Marcelo, 44, specializes in siding. “In a week here I can earn what I make in a month in Brazil,” he said in the 95-degree heat as he installed a gray facade on a one-story house in Callaway.
Many of the hurricane workers are undocumented immigrants who entered illegally across the southwestern border. Others are asylum seekers, fleeing persecution in their home countries, or tourists who were supposed to remain in the country for only a few months. Many said they came because they knew the work was plentiful and promised to pay well.
But since arriving in Bay County during the chaotic weeks after Hurricane Michael, many of the immigrant workers have been exploited by employers who do not always pay what they are owed, or landlords who charge exorbitant rent for their temporary quarters. In this relatively conservative corner of the country, some have been stopped by sheriff’s deputies and transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Sometimes we work and work, we trust people and then we don’t get paid,” said Will, a 44-year-old Honduran immigrant who has worked successive hurricanes since Katrina in 2005. Like others, he asked to be identified only by his first name out of concern that he could be targeted for deportation, which he said was a constant worry.
