'State of Perdition' -- South American Laborers Describe Working in New Orleans

New Orleans was muggy and hot when a friend and I first arrived on a Wednesday afternoon. The weather was like a tropical country, where beads of sweat come down your forehead just from standing up. We went to New Orleans to speak with immigrant workers who are rebuilding New Orleans and hear them share their stories of life after Katrina.

Finding immigrant workers in New Orleans was easy. According to the Gulf Coast Latin American Association, an estimated 30,000 immigrant workers moved to the Gulf Coast in the weeks after the hurricane. Exact numbers are hard to find because no one is officially keeping track of the fluctuating work force.

According to the findings of a study released by researchers at Tulane and Berkeley universities, nearly half of the hurricane repair workers in the New Orleans area are Latino, and one in four is undocumented. However, 87 percent of the undocumented workers were already living in the United States before moving to work in New Orleans.

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