Reconstruction and reconquista.

Immediately following Hurricane Katrina, President Bush issued an executive order suspending the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act as it applies to reconstruction efforts in the Gulf Coast region. This permits federal contractors in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi to pay below the prevailing wage.

Of course, the federal government has no constitutional authority to define wages, which is why Davis-Bacon should be repealed, rather than "suspended," by executive action. However, the president's order, coupled with the immediate infusion of tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid, creates a huge distortion in the labor market that will exacerbate our nation's problems with illegal immigration, as low-wage labor from Mexico and Latin America is drawn into the Gulf Coast.

In an October 1 Los Angeles Times column, Gregory Rodriguez of the New America Foundation exulted that "African-Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented [read: illegal], will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate." In addition to supporting the suspension of Davis-Bacon provisions, Rodriguez also supports the Department of Homeland Security's decision to suspend, temporarily, the practice of "sanctioning employers who hire workers who cannot document their citizenship. The idea is to benefit Americans who may have lost everything in the hurricane, but the main effect will be to let contractors hire illegal immigrants."

In late September, Rodriguez continues, "the White House said it will push its plan to allow illegal immigrants already in the United States to become legal guest workers. Good. Hurricane Katrina exposed the nation's black-white divide. Post-Katrina reconstruction will soon spotlight the hypocrisy of refusing to grant legal status to those who will rebuild the Gulf Coast and New Orleans." Or, put another way, it will offer a new pretext to the Bush administration and its allies as they pursue the abolition of our borders and U.S. amalgamation with Mexico.