While the cash donations made from people all over the country have been valuable, at some point Houston will need manpower to rebuild the city in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
Vox writes that new government policies that crackdown on undocumented workers will hurt Houston’s recovery process. In a time where people are needed to demolish buildings and reconstruct homes and offices, a majority of the nation’s builders are reporting worker shortages, especially with framing crews and drywall installation.
Vox notes that President Bush temporarily suspended some anti-immigration measures after Hurricane Katrina, which allowed New Orleans to boost its workforce. A 2006 study found that a quarter of the construction workers in the city after Katrina were undocumented immigrants, and that they did the hardest, dirties, and, perhaps, the most needed jobs of all.
They started by sweeping streets and removing moldy debris from buildings. They cleaned out rotting food from refrigerators. They put FEMA tarps on homes. They ended up removing more than 38 million cubic yards of trash and debris from the city. ... Undocumented immigrants were more likely to do more dangerous, labor-intensive work, such as laying roofs, painting homes and installing sheet rock.
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