Recent moves by the Bush administration will make it easier for illegal aliens to take the jobs that could go to U.S. citizens who lost employment due to Katrina. Those moves will also lower wages for reconstruction jobs in the affected areas.

1. The Davis Bacon Act has been suspended temporarily in the affected areas. This means that federal contractors there can lower their wages below the prevailing wages for such work. (Note that those counties where the Act has been suspended include three in south Florida: Broward, Miami-Dade, and Monroe).
2. According to the AP, "U.S. officials have suspended for 45 days a requirement that employers check workers' identification." Some of the hurricane victims might have lost their ID but, especially because that quote appears in an article about illegal aliens, the main beneficiaries of this policy would seem to be illegal aliens.
3. According to Vicente Fox, illegal aliens who seek hurricane assistance from the U.S. will not be "subject to any pressure or persecution". (The link in #2 says the administration has not confirmed that however.) The League of United Latin American Citizens is working with the Mexican government to get the word out about the benefits available to illegal aliens who were impacted. Mexico has also set up mobile consulates in the affected areas.

With an estimated 400,000 unemployed as a result of the hurricane, the idea of making it easier for illegal aliens to undercut American workers wouldn't seem to make much sense.

Reading between the lines of the WaPo's "Trying to Absorb the Newly Unemployed" offers a few clues:

About 250,000 of those displaced by Katrina have come to Texas... "Skilled people will certainly find jobs, [but] in terms of unskilled jobs the labor market is pretty tough," [Daniel S. Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas at Austin] said.

...Over the past few years, the state's unemployment rate has remained around 5 or 6 percent, but that figure does not reflect the increasing competition in the market for low-skill jobs, Hamermesh said. In Texas, those jobs -- mainly in hotels, restaurants, manufacturing and construction -- often are filled by the state's large population of first-generation immigrants from Mexico, he said...

There's a very good chance that a very large part of those "immigrants" are in fact illegal aliens.

As for the Davis-Bacon Act, the AFL-CIO responds in Bush Uses Disaster to Ram Through Low-Wage Work. They call this move "nothing less than profiteering" and say it "amounts to legalized looting". Unfortunately, the AFL-CIO - like many others on the left - seem to be living in a fantasy world: they want high wages, but they supported the "Immigrant" Worker's Freedom Ride and some in the union support the McCain-Kennedy massive illegal alien amnesty, and so on.

Needless to say, these moves by Bush provide an enormous opportunity to the Dems to both score political points and do something good for the victims of the hurricane. However, based on their past actions, I'm not expecting them to take advantage of it and do the right thing.

UPDATE: According to WDSU:

DHS spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez said in an e-mail that authorities want to provide food, water, shelter and medical supplies to everyone. She says no one should be afraid to accept offers to provide safety. But she would go no further.

UPDATE 2: Sep. 9's "Bush Suspends Prevailing Wage Laws for Katrina Clean Up" has the details on how Davis-Bacon got suspended:

Last week, Americans for Tax Reform, an organization founded by long-time Republican activists Grover Norquist, sent Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao a letter [PDF file] asking that she suspend the Davis-Bacon Act in order to free taxpayers from paying too much for the disaster clean up and management. Wednesday, Representatives Tom Feeney (R-Florida), Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colorado), sent Bush a similar letter, stating that the Act drives costs up and "effectively discriminates against non-union contractors."