Venezuelan migrants wandered bloodless and disoriented through the streets of Queens, New York, looking for a white van that would transport them to cleanup jobs after Hurricane Ian in Florida.
They did not locate the vehicle. Instead, network organizers discouraged immigrants from running with others they didn’t know. They warned that it was all a scam.
“It looks like human trafficking,” said Ariadna Phillips of South Bronx Mutual Aid organizers, who intercepted the migrants and directed them to a shelter. “They recruit migrants, take them there, don’t pay them and deport them. I’ve noticed it with other hurricanes. “
Migrant workers from Mexico, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and other countries are in the midst of the multibillion-dollar crisis recovery industry, and the consequences of Hurricane Ian are likely to be different. Experts expect migrants to arrive in Florida to provide assistance. Fixing homes after the fatal storm, putting their lives in danger for a modest salary.
The death toll in Florida rose to 75 on Tuesday. As rescue crews searched for homes and businesses devastated by the storm, many contractors and homeowners began seeking help to save the miles of destroyed homes left in the storm’s stem.
But migrant staff who fix communities don’t get a fair wage.
Phillips said he spoke with two men, cousins from Venezuela, who entered the U. S. U. S. Texas and then were taken through the state government to New York and dropped off at the Manhattan Port Authority Bus Terminal a few days ago. Homeless and penniless, they found out about the task. Phillips doesn’t know who’s recruiting them, but she and other network teams are investigating, she said.
She said organizers have been in contact with Venezuelan immigrants who accepted the jobs and traveled to Florida, but have already been told their starting salary will be used to cover transportation and housing.
“It’s wage theft and exploitation,” Phillips said.
Other teams have sought out migrant staff from unscrupulous employers.
Workers at Resilience Force, a New Orleans-based advocacy organization that tracks migrants at crisis sites to monitor operating conditions, arrived in Southwest Florida days after Ian made landfall and began traveling around the area, gathering migrant personnel by collecting at Home Depots or other spaces and answering phone calls from contractors to rental staff.
Resilience Force has noticed staff falling off roofs and injured without receiving any compensation, being denied thousands of dollars in wages and asking contractors to call immigration and customs enforcement about undocumented personnel to pay them what they are owed, Saket Soni said. the CEO of the Group.
Migrant staff also enter infected and flooded homes and businesses to make repairs, paintings that no one else is willing to do, he said.
“They are the bread and butter of this dirty and harmful work,” Soni said.
In recent years, migrant staff have most of the workforce tasked with rebuilding cities after natural disasters, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. So giant that a permanent Honduran network was born, he said.
Many at the affected sites are undocumented, making them even more vulnerable to abuse, Soto said. In a survey of 361 structural workers weeks after heavy rains from Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston, 72 percent were unauthorized immigrants, according to a report from the institute. was a co-author.
“There is an annoying sense of marginalization of migrants” in crisis sites, Soto said. “This is anything that already exists and it’s amplified catastrophic events. “
Since 1980, the U. S. has been working in the U. S. The U. S. has suffered 332 weather and climate errors, totaling more than $2. 275 trillion in inflation-adjusted losses, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This year, through July, there have been nine weather errors in the United States. , with losses exceeding $1 billion each, according to NOAA.
Some merchants are so wealthy in crisis sites that they now have fair homeowners and institutional investors, Soni said.
“The argument that the industry can’t pay staff is no longer true,” he said. “There are now billions of dollars circulating in this industry. “
Migrant staff are recruited through classified ads on social media sites such as WhatsApp and leaflets distributed at migrant shelters, Soni said.
In March 2020, hard-working agents recruited Venezuelan immigrants from Miami to work in Michigan after heavy rains triggered historic flooding, he said. , which leads to many getting sick.
“Labor agents offer smart rates, but when staff arrive in the crisis area, the promises turn out to be wrong,” Soni said. “This amounts to hiring through fraud. “
Many Venezuelans and Colombian newcomers who entered Texas, U. S. U. S. citizens who were bussed to New York, Washington or Chicago could be particularly vulnerable because delays mean it will take them at least two years to get permission to paint legally, said Camille Mackler, founder and executive director of Immigrant ARC, a coalition of immigration lawyers and legal teams founded in New York.
Many to corporations willing to give them back.
“Immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, are more vulnerable to unscrupulous employers,” he said.
William Lopez, 40, of Honduras, arrived in Florida Saturday from his home in New Orleans eager to work.
On Tuesday, he met with other immigrants at a Home Depot in Port Charlotte, hoping for the chance to rebuild the fields of damaged homes around him. If I had the chance to be hired, it would be a harmful job, I knew it. And he would earn less than a U. S. citizen doing the same job.
“We threatened everything to come here,” he said. But we need to rebuild Florida. We are on the front line. “
After Lopez arrived in Florida over the weekend, he spent days sleeping in his truck and had little access to food. In the past, he worked in crisis spaces as a roofer and plasterboard installer, adding the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael in 2018 and Hurricane Ida last year in Louisiana.
In 2021, employers hurt him with more than $12,000 in promised wages, he said.
This time, he hoped he could paint and get paid his due.
Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.