By Steve Sailer
08/31/2017
Now, it’s not true that the mainstream media is utterly ignoring the immigration angle in the Houston flood. For example, from Reuters:
How Trump’s immigration crackdown could slow flood-hit Houston’s efforts to rebuild[Comment at Unz.com]Mica Rosenberg and Dan Levine
#ENVIRONMENT AUGUST 30, 2017 / 1:22 PM / 8 HOURS AGO
HOUSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) — In the coming weeks, as Houston turns its attention to rebuilding areas devastated by Tropical Storm Harvey, people like Jay De Leon are likely to play an outsized role — if they stay around.
De Leon, 47, owns a small construction business in Houston, and he and his 10 employees do exactly the kind of demolition and refurbishing the city will need. But like a large number of construction workers in Texas, De Leon and most of his workers live in the United States illegally, and that could make things complicated.
The Pew Research Center estimated last year that 28 percent of Texas’s construction workforce is undocumented, while other studies have put the number as high as 50 percent. Construction employed 23 percent of working undocumented adults in Texas at the end of 2014, higher than any other sector, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
However, undocumented immigrants are growing increasingly nervous in Texas because of an immigration crackdown by the Trump administration that has cast a wide net. …
The labor shortages are likely to grow worse, many builders warn. Earlier this year, a group of Hispanic contractors sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott warning that the pending ban on sanctuary city policies would make it “difficult to find and retain experienced workers.”
Reporting by Mica Rosenberg in Houston and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Ann Saphir and Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Sue Horton and Ross Colvin Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.