New Orleans and the Hispanic population

In the wake of Katrina, thousands of Spanish-speaking people are migrating to New Orleans, drawn by the dream of a better life.

Sunday, October 08, 2006
By Mark Waller

100,000 newcomers
A U.S. Census Bureau survey of hurricane-affected Gulf Coast communities suggested an influx of almost 100,000 Hispanics in the four months after Katrina. The survey also found a slight rise in Hispanics in New Orleans and surrounding parishes, to just above 6 percent.
"In some ways, New Orleans is just catching up with a trend that's happening in every other city in the country," said Elizabeth Fussell, a Tulane sociologist. "Katrina has put us on the national map."

Construction jobs are the primary mode of entry for immigrants throughout the country, Fussell said. New Orleans is suddenly producing a profusion of such jobs.
Like all aspects of the fluid and hard-to-measure post-storm population, definitive numbers are elusive, but the evidence that Hispanic laborers have become a fact of life at construction sites across the city is irrefutable.

Other sectors of the economy are also responding to the Hispanic wave, as attested by a demand for bilingual employees, said Darlene Kattan, executive director of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana. Spanish is appearing on more signs. Food markets and restaurants are adjusting their selections for a growing Hispanic clientele. Stores with money-wiring services bustle with immigrants sending earnings home to their families.
Almost all the advertisers are back on Spanish-speaking KGLA AM-1540, Radio Tropicale Caliente, and the station is seeking to air more ads to reach a growing customer base, station owner Ernesto Schweikert said.

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