Immigration Issue Hits Fevered Pitch in Louisiana

“While Monday’s “day without immigrants” demonstrations disrupted many larger urban cities, the effects were not felt as strongly in Southwest Louisiana. That leaves the question: are there just fewer immigrant workers locally, or did they just not take part in Monday’s work boycott? The U.S. has an estimated 12,000,000 undocumented immigrants, but up until recently few of them could be found in Southwest Louisiana. According to local job placement experts, trends have changed over the past few years and even more so since Hurricane Rita.

Lake Charles job placement professional David Chozen said, “We were not getting the Hispanic workers into this area. Other areas were providing opportunities for them.” That was the trend before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita lashed Louisiana’s coastline. Now, with so much work still to be done during the clean up and recovery after the storms, things have changed. Chozen said, “It’s provided a vacuums that kind of brings these employees into the New Orleans area, into the Lake Charles area, into South Louisiana.”"

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