Labor and Immigration

Note: This Essay was written in 2024 before the Trump 2 immigration crack down, meaning some of these issues are more important than ever and the safety nets for immigrants have been gutted further

Migrant labor and immigrants employed in the United States often are the victims of white collar crime on part of their employers, ranging in severity from wage theft, to labor trafficking or even modern day slavery. Understanding the history of labor rights especially in the context of immigration, and how we respond in general to white collar crime directed at oppressed groups is important in advocating for ways in which we can help victims of these crimes to be compensated and standards of social justice fulfilled. By centering immigrants in our labor conversations we strengthen worker protections for all.

There is a motto in the IWW or Industrial Workers of the World, which is an international labor union, that “An injury to one is an injury to all” 

“The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor organization, has long argued that a path to legal status for millions of undocumented workers is crucial to reducing wage theft that harms all workers.”

Pathways to legal status can help workers feel more supported when they report employers who are breaking the law and help to protect them from retaliation. Workers in the US who are here legally under work visas or other visas may still fear that employers have control over their immigration status and employers exploit that fear and use it as leverage to control the lives of their workers. This attitude seeps into other areas of labor, and employers bank on the biases of their low wage birthright workers to side with them over immigrant workers with the “they took our jobs” narrative.

When I was young and unaware of the world, I was a victim of wage theft and other labor violations. I remember complaining to my managers about my paycheck and the managers response was something to the effect of “cleaning rooms isn't worth much more pay, I could go into bellingham and find an illegal mexican to do the work and they wouldn't complain about it like you do” This sentiment stuck with me and instead of getting upset that this person would “take my job” I started to develop class consciousness and realized that that person should also be entitled to a livable wage and human decency. I realized at this point that I had more in common with my potential immigrant replacement than with the management. Unfortunately, many people do not make the same conclusion I did. Many people think that immigrants are the criminals instead of the white collar criminals who sign our meager checks. This narrative benefits our shared oppressor. 

“Liang Tai Knitwear Co., Ltd. (Manufacturer) and Hong Yuan Industrial Co., Ltd. (Marketer) (collectively defendants) are in the garment business here in Los Angeles. Lou Yu Jie (Wife) and Fu E. Min (Husband) (collectively plaintiffs) both worked for defendants in the garment business. After defendants laid off plaintiffs, plaintiffs sued, alleging their terminations were retaliatory in nature: plaintiffs had reported defendants to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the INS had raided defendants' business and arrested approximately 40 percent of defendants' labor force as undocumented, and hence illegal, workers.” Jie v.Tai Knitwear Co.(2001) 

In the case of Jie v. Tai Knitwear Co, the plaintiffs, who were unaware of the immigration work permits and misled by employers, doing everything they could to obey US law. The defendants had been hired under the assumption that their employer was going through the correct legal protocols, and found that the employer had not gotten them the correct legal documentation. Once they found out, they applied for work visas and the company was subsequently raided and the defendants had been found to be employing people illegally. Because the plaintiffs had caused the employers to come under scrutiny they were then retaliated against in the form of job termination. 

In this case, not only were the plaintiffs doing their best to follow the law, but we also see that employers can cause workers to break the law by not providing the legal work documentation necessary. If an employer breaks the law in this way, a worker would also be at risk of deportation. We can also see that the idea of illegal or undocumented workers may not be the fault of the worker themselves, but rather the fault of negligent or malicious employers seeking to find cheap labor. Employers who do this are also perpetuating negative views of migrant and immigrant labor that dominates the national conversation of this group of workers. This case also is an example of how employers are likely to retaliate against employees who are trying to follow the law.

Immigrants here on work visas and undocumented immigrants are often treated harshly by employers and targeted for wage theft because their status is invoked to justify illegal wages “You’d hear things like, ‘You can’t take a break. You’re illegal,’” Rocio Martinez, 30 said. “It was said like it was a joke. But it really wasn’t.”

In an article about wage theft and its effects on immigrants, pbs interviews several immigrant workers who have experienced wage theft. Wage theft as a crime is extremely difficult to seek justice for as a native-born citizen, add on top of it fear of deportation as retaliation, and you have a recipe for exploitation. Washington state has 2 people for the entire state that investigate wage theft, and so often, wage theft requires the help of private civil litigation, which in many cases is unreachable to people who fear deportation. While the federal labor board does not ask workers their citizenship status, they are aware that Labor board workers may be seen as authority figures and so undocumented or mixed documented families may remain silent. 

Many workers are here under H2 visas, in which they are not given resident status, but are instead brought in to work seasonal jobs. These Jobs are often very hard labor in agriculture and critics of the program consider it mail order labor that leaves workers vulnerable to employers' whims. Oftentimes, because lodging must be provided by the employer the employer also acts as the worker’s landlord and these landlord-tenant relationships are not subject to the same responsibilities and protections as conventional landlord/ tenant laws. This leads instances that harken to company towns and the like and are rife with exploitation. 

Agricultural interests are often in bed with immigration law and seek to keep a stream of easily exploitable labor. American politics has a legal/illegal dichotomy in regards to immigration which feeds racism and justifies the mistreatment of workers. This bleeds into our daily life. Once when I was with a former employer, we saw Latinx  roofers on top of a neighboring house. It was about 98 degrees that day and the roof which was black must have been hellish and I was concerned because it didn't appear as if they had taken their legally protected breaks. I made a comment about how I thought it must be too hot to safely work and his response was “they are from Mexico, they probably like this heat” Not only did he assume these were undocumented workers from mexico, but also he assumed that somehow their heat tolerance would be much different than ours, as if their human bodies were not subject to the same levels of heat exhaustion as white birthright Americans. I have heard similar comments from white US birthright citizens on multiple occasions. I believe that this narrative is encouraged by our political leaders, media and agriculture lobbyists because it causes birthright citizens to look away from the very real labor exploitation that may occur in their or their neighbor’s backyard (or roof). 

There is a disdain for migrant workers and low wage workers seeking to immigrate in our national discourse. Political opposition to giving undocumented workers legal status relies on fears that immigrants hurt the economy and rely on welfare when in fact those concerns can be refuted as the bullet points from the ACLU’s website point out : 

• A U.S. Department of Labor study prepared by the Bush Administration noted that the perception that immigrants take jobs away from American workers is “the most persistent fallacy about immigration in popular thought” because it is based on the mistaken assumption that there is only a fixed number of jobs in the economy.

• Experts note that immigrants are blamed for unemployment because Americans can see the jobs immigrants fill but not the jobs they create through productivity, capital formation and demand for goods and services.

• Immigrants pay more than $90 billion in taxes every year and receive only $5 billion in welfare. Without their contributions to the public treasury, the economy would suffer enormous losses.

—-------ACLU

In the case of Takahashi v. Fish & Game Comm'n, 334 U.S. 410 (1948) we see that Immigrants have also been discriminated against by state actors when trying to work. In this case Takahashi, an immigrant from Japan was discriminated against by Fish and Game by a denial of a fishing license. Takahashi was a legal immigrant but faced racism after the US and Japan were in conflict during world war 2. Takahashi wanted to fish off the coast of california and in order to do this type of labor would need a fishing license. The Court ruled in Takahashi’s favor that as a legal immigrant he could not be discriminated against. In this context, Takahashi would be his own employer as a fisherman, and be able to to “be his own boss” but the state was interfering. Labor rights extend to workers who are self employed and protections for immigrant business owners are important. 

In my previous activism in the arena of wage theft I read Wage Theft in America by Kim Bobo and reached out to the author. She responded and we met via zoom for about an hour to discuss the topic of wage theft. Much of her book discusses immigrant and migrant labor exploitation, and we discussed some of this in our meeting. Her stance is that labor activists need to be working in solidarity with the immigrant community and that immigrant resource centers are crucial in combating the crime wave of wage theft in america.

Locally, Community to Community or C2C  has been fighting for workers rights, food sovereignty and immigration rights. They organize meetings between legislature and farm workers, help in labor disputes and also work to find lawyers for workers who are getting deported. C2C also put started Dignity Campaign which has created “A proposal for alternative Immigration reform based on human, civil and labor rights for all” which is a comprehensive plan discussing a wide range of issues that are important, including phasing out the H2 program and replacing it with something that protects immigrant labor more than the H2 programs.

Community to Community championed a project to create an Immigrant resource center in Bellingham, but this proposal was unfortunately voted down by City Council. Despite this setback they continue to do good work in the community.

 More work needs to be done. Access to more permanent resident visas would protect workers, In the case of Aliens for Better Immigration Laws v. United States, 871 F. Supp. 182 (S.D.N.Y. 1994) housekeepers and Child care workers had obtained work visas in hopes that in 2 years they would have the ability to file for a permanent resident visa, but in 1990, laws were amended. The government increased the amount of visas for workers, but “low skilled” workers ended up getting a raw deal. The law separated the workers into three categories, giving preference of these visas to “Priority workers” "with extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics, which has been demonstrated by sustained national or international acclaim and whose achievements have been recognized in the field through extensive documentation." 8 U.S.C. § 1153(b) (1 The next group, the “skilled” workers, or professionals like doctors or lawyers get priority for these green cards, and the remaining ones would then go to “low skill workers” that even with increased amount of Visas, these visas went to the first to categories, and created less visas for “low skill” workers resulting in extending the wait time for a green card from a couple years to around 20. 

In this case, The plaintiffs, tried to contend that these new policies were unconstitutional but ended up losing the case. This is unfortunate. Low skill workers deserve better treatment, and this preference for one type of labor is problematic in many instances. Green cards, or permanent residence visas create stability in the lives of those who are given access to them. Yes, we need skilled workers, but unskilled workers are already in a vulnerable position and need access to stability. Despite the loss of this case, we see immigrants working to improve their own lives and in so doing, this activism shows a need for change, as well as how difficult the fight can be.

One of the biggest cases that can be made for creating more pathways to citizenship is immigration’s positive effect on the economy. Here are some statistics from the bureau of labor and statsistics

--In 2022, the foreign born accounted for 18.1 percent of the U.S. civilian labor force,

   up from 17.4 percent in 2021. (See table 1.)

 --From 2021 to 2022, the unemployment rate of the foreign born declined from 5.6 percent

   to 3.4 percent, and the jobless rate for the native born decreased from 5.3 percent to

   3.7 percent. (See table 1.)

 --Hispanics continued to account for nearly one-half of the foreign-born labor force in 2022,

   and Asians accounted for one-quarter. (See table 1.) (Data in this news release for persons

   who are White, Black, or Asian do not include those of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity. Data

   on persons of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity are presented separately.)

 --Foreign-born men continued to participate in the labor force at a considerably higher rate

   in 2022 (77.4 percent) than their native-born counterparts (66.0 percent). By contrast, 

   55.0 percent of foreign-born women were labor force participants, lower than the

   participation rate of 57.2 percent for native-born women. (See table 1.)

 --In 2022, foreign-born workers were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in

   service occupations; natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations; and

   production, transportation, and material moving occupations. Foreign-born workers were

   less likely than native-born workers to be employed in management, professional, and 

   related occupations and in sales and office occupations. (See table 4.)

 --The median usual weekly earnings of foreign-born full-time wage and salary workers were

   $945 in 2022, compared with $1,087 for their native-born counterparts. (See table 5.)

   (Differences in earnings reflect a variety of factors, including variations in the

   distributions of foreign-born and native-born workers by educational attainment, occupation, 

   industry, and geographic region.)

–Bureau of labor and statistics

With the human need to have dignity and respect as well as livable wages we need to be working together to lift eachother up, regardless of nationality. Immigrants improve our economy and make our communities beautiful and interesting. The entire labor movement should get behind migrant and immigrant workers and center the voices of those who are the most vulnerable to labor exploitation, discrimination and other employment based issues. Everyone should have access to safe working conditions and a livable wage for an honest day’s work. By creating more pathways to citizenship we strengthen worker protections for all.