Immigrant workers stiffed for Katrina work


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GULFPORT, Mississippi (AP) -- A pattern is emerging as the cleanup of Mississippi's Gulf Coast morphs into its multibillion-dollar reconstruction: Come payday, untold numbers of Hispanic immigrant laborers are being stiffed.

Sometimes, the boss simply vanishes. Other workers wait on promises that soon, someone in a complex hierarchy of contractors will provide the funds to pay them.

Nonpayment of wages is a violation of federal labor law, but these workers -- thousands of them, channeled into teams that corral debris, swaddle punctured roofs in blue tarps and gut rain-ravaged homes -- are especially vulnerable because many are here illegally.

After Katrina hit, Armando Ojeda paid $1,200 to be smuggled across the desert border from Mexico, a walk that took several nights. Talk of $10 an hour -- more in a day than he made each week at a computer factory back home -- led him to pay another $1,200 to be crammed in van with a dozen other immigrants and driven 1,600 miles, from a safe house in Arizona to Mississippi.

"I am stupid for coming," he said, with a smile and shake of the head. "It was a foolish thing, nothing more."

Nonpayment of immigrant workers is not a new phenomenon -- and it doesn't appear to be as much of an issue in New Orleans. With so much work to do and not enough laborers to do it, the market there appears to favor workers.

A spokeswoman for the federal Labor Department said she could not determine whether there have been any post-Katrina claims in the Gulf region. But there are some in the pipeline: On Friday, a representative of the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance said the advocacy group had prepared complaints on behalf of more than 150 workers who are owed more than $100,000 by five contractors.

Out in the cleanup-zone, dozens of Hispanic immigrant workers interviewed by the AP shared a common refrain: "I worked without being paid."

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On the one hand the people doing that are the biggest scumbags the earth has ever borne, on the other hand I guess that's life isn't it. At the end of the day we'll just say "ow." and go back to eating lunch.

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