Katrina has displaced hundreds of thousands of Americans who now need food, housing and cash. Relief for those necessities will have to be temporary and it will be many months before they can return to New Orleans, if ever, so what they need most of all is jobs.

Our government should act immediately to put these displaced Americans in the jobs now held by illegal immigrants. Today, some 10 million illegal immigrants are working in our country, so there is no excuse for not replacing 1 million of them with unemployed U.S. citizens.

President Bush should announce an immediate crackdown on employers of illegals and set up a hiring database with which to match unemployed workers with jobs.

Remember how Bush was talking glibly about inviting "willing workers" to come here from other countries? We should give affirmative-action preference to willing workers from Louisiana and Mississippi.

Meanwhile, the Senate voted $10 billion and then another $50 billion for hurricane relief, and that's all deficit spending. Why not take that money out of foreign aid handouts since we have an obligation to help our own first?

Our guide for dealing with the Katrina disaster should be Booker T. Washington's speech at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895. Known as one of the most memorable and influential speeches in U.S. history, it is just as timely today as when it was given.

Washington told the story of a ship lost at sea for many days. When it sighted a friendly vessel, it sent a desperate signal from its mast: "Water, water; we die of thirst!" The friendly vessel signaled back, "Cast down your bucket where you are."

The lost ship signaled again, "Water, water; send us water!" Again the friendly ship sent the message, "Cast down your bucket where you are."

After a third and fourth such exchange, the captain of the distressed vessel finally heeded the injunction and cast down his bucket. It came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.

Washington then admonished members of his own race to cast down their buckets "in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions." He cautioned that "in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the productions of our hands."

"We shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life," he said. "No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem." Continued...