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LOU DOBBS -- CNN-TV at 6 & 11 pm ET

DOBBS: Tonight there is growing concern and criticism that the Bush
administration has made it possible for tens of thousands of Gulf
Coast reconstruction jobs that should be offered to residents who had
to live through the disaster now looking to rebuild their lives, those
jobs instead will be filled by illegal aliens. The fear is that New
Orleans will turn into La Nueva Orleans, once proud city of working
Americans, displaced now by cheap, illegal foreign labor.

Christine Romans reports.


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Gregory Rodriguez says illegal
aliens will do much of the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast.


GREGORY RODRIGUEZ, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION: This is how the nation has
always worked, which is the broader point. The broader point is, in
large reconstruction projects, back-breaking labor is often and most
often -- most often done by immigrants at low wages who are willing to
do these jobs that the nation needs to be done.

ROMANS: His op-ed published in the "L.A. Times" calls it "Nueva
Orleans." He says many of these illegal workers will stay and make New
Orleans more like Los Angeles.


That the hurricane disasters are a boon for illegal labor is clear. In
the wake of Katrina, Mexican President Vicente Fox was touting Mexican
laborers, telling "The New York Times," "If there is anything Mexicans
are good at, it is construction." And many say our federal government
is making it possible to hire illegal aliens in the Gulf Coast en
masse.

The Department of Homeland Security dropped paper work requirements to
help American workers who have lost everything, but many say it's a
free pass for contractors to hire illegal workers. The president also
suspended a 74-year-old law requiring at least average wages for
government contract work. Many fear wages for Gulf Coast workers will
fall and illegal workers won't complain.


REP. STEVE KING (R), IOWA: American citizens and people who are here
on green cards, legal -- legal residents of the United States, people
that have lawful presence here and a right to work, that's the only
people that should be working in the United States of America. That's
the people that should be rebuilding the Gulf Coast.

ROMANS: Georgia Congressman Charlie Norwood says Hurricane Katrina
should be forcing Americans to come together, not "...letting
potential taxpayer-funded jobs for storm victims be looted by illegal
immigrant labor cheered on by Mexican President Vicente Fox."


(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROMANS: Many fear illegal laborers will send much of their earnings
home to Mexico in remittances, taxpayer-funded rebuilding of the Gulf
Coast, we should point out. And that will just continue a cycle of
poverty and joblessness in the Gulf Coast among American citizens --
Lou.

DOBBS: This is remarkable that this continues, with our elected
officials standing there doing absolutely nothing. We're watching the
Bush administration make this possible.


It is, in effect, the looting of the treasury, the rolling back of
worker protection in this country, and allowing Vicente Fox, who
apparently is more adept than others in responding to disaster -- and
those remittances already amounting to $21 billion a year, the number
one source of income, above even their oil revenues in Mexico.

ROMANS: There's a lot more money to come if a lot of these citizens
get jobs in the Gulf Coast.


DOBBS: And there is nothing funny about this. The fact is that many of
the residents -- hundreds of thousands of residents in that area
desperately needing jobs are going to be forced out because of the
economics by illegal aliens.

Christine, thank you very much.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

DOBBS: Christine Romans.

The Mexican government says it is seeing soaring demand for its
matricula consular I.D. cards which Mexican illegal aliens use to
establish credit, open bank accounts and sign up for government
services in this country. Five years ago, the Mexican government had
issued only half a million of those cards to its citizens residing in
the United States.

Last year, more than four million matricula consular cards were in
circulation. That after a decided campaign by the Mexican government
in this country to get people -- that is, Mexican nationals -- to sign
up for the cards in this country.

All that is required is to get a card. It's proof of U.S. residence,
not citizenship, we should point out. Critics say these cards allow
illegal aliens to reap the benefits of American citizenship without
earning that citizenship nor undertaking any of the responsibilities
of citizenship.

U.S. companies also benefit by drawing new business from those illegal
aliens using matricula consular cards. In the past four years, half a
million Latin Americans with matricula cards, many of them Mexican
illegal aliens, have opened up new bank accounts at Wells Fargo alone.

As illegal aliens find themselves financially rewarded for living
illegally in this country, an historic shift is taking place in our
nation's illegal alien crisis. A new study providing again new
evidence that our nation's broken borders are simply wide open and
failing.

Casey Wian reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CASEY WIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): America has always been a
land of immigrants, but now it's more accurate to say we're becoming a
land of illegal aliens. A new study on immigration trends by the Pew
Hispanic Center found that for the first time in history there are
more illegal aliens than legal immigrants arriving in the United
States each year.

ROBERTO SURO, DIRECTOR, PEW HISPANIC CENTER: And the rapid increases
of migration that took place in the late 1990s, the mix changed
somewhat. And the biggest change in the mix was in terms of legal
status. And that trend has continued, and, in fact, it seems to have
accelerated a bit in the last couple of years.

WIAN: The study found that in 1992, legal immigrants outnumbered
illegal aliens by about two to one. Then legal immigration began a
slow decline while illegal entry spiked. By 2004, illegal aliens
outnumbered legal immigrants by 24 percent, though both categories
remained slightly lower than their pre-9/11 peak.

Another finding comes as no surprise. More immigrants, both legal and
illegal, come from Mexico than any other country. Mexico is also the
fastest-growing so-called sender nation to the United States. And this
has taken place while the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has
made several well publicized attempts to beef up security along the
southern border.

Just last week, Customs and Border Protection held a press conference
proclaiming it's making progress in reducing illegal immigration in
Arizona.

REP. TOM TANCREDO (R), COLORADO: Here is the success. Picture a stream
which is actually really pretty much like a flood, and you drop a
boulder into it, and you can say we have successfully stopped the
water from coming to where it -- coming through where this boulder
was. The flood is going around it.

Can you really claim that you've successfully impeded the flow? I
don't think so.

WIAN: The study also found that immigration, at least from Mexico,
increases when the U.S. economy is strong, not necessarily when
Mexico's weakens.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WIAN: That suggests that demand for cheap labor here in the United
States is the main reason for increasing rates of both legal and
illegal immigration from Mexico -- Lou.

DOBBS: I have to say, Casey, let's speak straightforwardly here, the
Pew Center, which does many good things and does them well, I read
language in this report that sounded as if it had come from the heart
of the darkest side of academia and the deepest recesses of
bureaucracy, unintelligible language posing as some sort of
explanation. It was idiotic.

WIAN: Well, the authors of the Pew study say they did not try to
explain the reasons behind this shift in legal immigration versus
illegal immigration. They did touch on some of them, but they say that
wasn't their intent. All they wanted to do was present the numbers --
Lou.

DOBBS: They should have really referred it to the "TIME" magazine
special report of last year identifying three million illegal aliens
and the causes for it. Much of which, by the way, is the encouragement
of the Mexican government and the deplorable conditions that exist in
Mexico. And, of course, business employers in this country ignoring
the law and doing so with impunity because there's no prospect of
punishment.

WIAN: And that's the one thing that the U.S. could do something about
-- Lou.

DOBBS: Absolutely. We could do a lot about a lot of things in this
country, but a lot of people have forgotten that America is in control
of its destiny, if it simply exercises political will.

Casey Wian, thank you, sir.

WIAN: Thank you.