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Following the hearing before the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights (see "Gulf Coast Hurricane Survivors Ask International
Body to Investigate Human Rights Violations"), hurricane
survivors and advocates took their message to Capitol Hill. At a
congressional staff briefing organized and hosted by NILC in conjunction
with the Congressional Asian and Pacific American Caucus, the
Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus,
advocates asked Congress to take concrete steps to protect the rights of
Gulf Coast hurricane survivors and workers. The AFL-CIO, American
Friends Service Committee, Interfaith Worker Justice, and National
Council of La Raza helped NILC support the event.
The briefing was moderated by NILC Skadden
Fellow Karen Tumlin and featured presentations by Victoria Cintra of the
Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, Leah Hodges of the Causeway
Concentration Camp Foundation, and Monique Harden of Advocates for
Environmental Human Rights, who each reiterated the testimony they
presented earlier in the day to the Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights. In addition, Tomás Aguilar from the Equal Justice Center in
Austin, Texas, and Jennifer Rosenbaum from the Southern Poverty Law
Center in Montgomery, Alabama, described the working and living
conditions of immigrant workers in the Gulf Coast based on their own
work in New Orleans.
Using survey data, photographs, and
testimonies from workers they had interviewed, Aguilar and Rosenbaum
provided a compelling description of the abuses workers are currently
enduring. Workers are sleeping in tents, flooded homes and cars, as
well as in bunk beds stacked three-high in moldy "worker hotels." Many
go without protective equipment, even though their jobs expose them to
mold, asbestos, toxic chemicals, broken glass, and other health
hazards. Unscrupulous contractors often shortchange these workers on
their wages or pay them nothing at all. Rosenbaum also distributed
"Broken Levees, Broken Promises: New Orleans Migrant Workers in Their
Own Words," a powerful collection of first-person accounts of the
abusive and dangerous working and living conditions migrant workers are
facing in the Gulf Coast. (This
report is available on
the Southern Poverty Law Center's website.) In short, a lack of federal
oversight of government contracts and lax enforcement of fundamental
labor laws is allowing the Gulf Coast to be rebuilt on the backs of
underpaid or unpaid workers toiling in substandard working conditions.
Many of the participating organizations made
specific recommendations for future congressional action. NILC
presented a list of recommendations to Congress to ensure that the
reconstruction of the hurricane-ravaged region promotes the basic labor
rights of all workers (available
here). NILC
made specific recommendations for congressional action to accomplish the
following goals:
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Stop wage theft in the Gulf Coast.
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Improve health and safety conditions in the
Gulf Coast.
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Ensure oversight of federal agencies'
enforcement of labor laws.
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Increase transparency and accountability in
the federal contracting process.
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Prevent employers from misusing immigration
laws to circumvent their legal obligations in the workplace.
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Provide federal oversight of state and
local responses to the hurricanes.
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Ensure disaster assistance is provided to
immigrant survivors of the hurricanes.
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Amend immigration laws to ensure that legal
status of immigrant survivors is not affected by the loss of loved
ones, work, or documents in the hurricanes.
By
Brett Murphy, NILC Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow
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