Jesse Jackson’s high-profile visit with Mexican Presidente Vicente Fox last summer over the racist stamp imbroglio looked suspiciously like a ploy to maintain the Rev.’s viability in the future Mexicanized America. Surely the reconquista brain trust would need a reliable professional Negro to keep pushing the “rainbow coalition” baloney to blacks not bright enough to see the rip-off.

As an ethnic wheeler-dealer whose stock is falling, Jesse appeared a little too anxious to please the Mexicans, as he quickly announced the need for a new coalition between blacks and Hispanics, though he had little to show for his trouble: he couldn’t even pry a proper apology out of Fox for the earlier comment that Mexicans would do work even blacks wouldn’t touch. The Rev. looked weak, but kept on plugging anyway.

So Jesse’s recent bus round-up of far-flung Katrina-displaced blacks to New Orleans for the purpose of claiming reconstruction jobs required extra finesse not to upset his Mexican associates. (Up to 80,000 New Orleaneans are living in shelters around the country, many of whom are destitute and need jobs.) He had to appear concerned with the well-being of black Americans without speaking ill of Mexican illegals who are swarming over the employment free-for-all like ants at a picnic:

Lured by jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour, the Spanish-speaking day laborers have flooded into New Orleans to haul out debris, clear downed trees, put in drywall and perform other tasks as rebuilding takes hold in the city. Specialized roofers can make $300 a day. ["Immigrants Rush to New Orleans as Contractors Fight for Workers" LA Times, 10/10/05]

Jesse was not at his smoothest when quizzed on Lou Dobbs Tonight (10/11) after the bus caravan’s arrival in New Orleans:

And so when Mr. Bush put forth a federal bailout on the state’s terms and gave no bid contracts and suspended the building wages, they began to recruit workers from Central America. They didn’t just like invade us, workers from Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Maquiladora. Those workers were recruited because they could make them — let them work on the prevailing wages without health insurance.

See? According to Jesse, job-thieving illegal aliens are innocent victims, and there’s no invasion stealing us blind and destroying everything we value.

And cartographers haven’t located the country of Maquiladora just yet…

Payroll employment fell by 35,000 positions in September, a stronger than expected showing given the havoc created by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The Household Survey was still more upbeat, reporting a September job loss of just 17,000.

Even bigger more surprising: the Household Survey’s finding that Hispanic employment declined by 117,000, or 0.6 percent, in September.

This was the first reduction in Hispanic employment since April, and the largest monthly reduction in Hispanic employment since February 2004, when it fell 0.9 percent. Non-Hispanic employment rose by 100,000, or 0.08 percent in September, and the VDAWDI index of worker displacement declined to 113.7 from 114.5 in August.

But the long-term trend is firmly intact: From the start of the George W. Bush’s Administration (January 2001) through September 2005 Hispanic employment rose by 17.7 percent, while non-Hispanic employment grew by just 3.4 percent.

I expected VDAWDI [the VDARE.COM American Worker Displacement Index ] to rise because Hispanics seemed less likely than other groups to be among the weather related economic victims in Louisiana and Mississippi. The storms’ impact on heavily Hispanic regions of Florida may be the missing ingredient.

Or the September employment figures may simply be wrong - despite the best efforts of BLS to make adjustments.

The September Household Survey was conducted “largely according to standard procedures” according to the BLS press release, adding that “Efforts were made to contact households in storm-affected areas with the exception of Orleans and Jefferson parishes in Louisiana, which were under mandatory evacuation orders when instructions were issued.”

I suspect the BLS figures underreport job losses throughout the Gulf region, and that this may have distorted VDAWDI for the month of September.

Stay tuned.