Catherwood LibraryILR School

The devastation recently caused by Hurricane Harvey in Texas, especially the Houston area, might lead to a monumental clash between Texas’ remarkably stringent immigration policy, the Trump administration’s bold stance against “illegal” immigrants, and the massive need for labor to reconstruct southeast Texas. The Equal Justice Center in Austin expects a massive influx of primarily undocumented workers and workers living below the poverty line to take on a bulk of the work associated with construction, dealing with hazardous wastes, and other jobs whose demand has invariably skyrocketed due to the hurricane. With the labor pool of construction workers in Texas already dwindling before immigration laws recently tightened, cheap immigrant labor could not be more critical in Houston. Immigrant workers currently feel the threat of detainment and deportation more than ever. Working in Texas may provide a lucrative opportunity for undocumented workers but the massive risks involved leave onlookers questioning if restrictions on immigrant labor will lax in response to the natural disaster or whether the state and federal attitudes will not budge.