Cleanup relies on day labor of Latinos. New Orleans, Lousiana

“Edgar Antonio used to get his jobs in the parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts on Jimmy Carter Boulevard in Norcross, Ga. But lately it’s been here in the parking lot of the Shell station at Lee Circle, where on a recent morning he wondered about his place in America.

Since shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, the 26-year-old Honduran had done America’s dirtiest work, cleaning this city’s muck- and mold-caked schools and post offices and gutting its fetid houses. “It stinks bad, you don’t know how it stinks inside your house,” he said. “We do a hard job, American people, they not doing. . . . One day, the United States is going to know how much we help….”

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