May 2025
The presence of immigrant labor in the United States is a response to degraded labor that was rejected by U.S. born workers. As the U.S. born reject jobs with poor labor conditions, these sectors experience labor shortages, harming these sectors. In response, employers seek out migrant labor to keep these industries afloat. Industries like meatpacking, agriculture, domestic work, transportation, warehousing, and construction, etc. are dependent on migrant labor after these sectors experienced wage and fringe benefit degradation as a result of decades of corporate pushback on unions and abuses of subcontracting.
Around the 70’s, construction employers ‘double breasted’ their laborers to weaken construction worker unions. Double breasting refers to the division of a company’s laborers into unionized and non-unionized workers and treating them differently. This practice allowed companies to undercut their union workers by giving a disproportionate number of jobs to their non-union workers (who would work for less pay but got more jobs) or give their non-union workers certain benefits to remain non-unionized. This effectively pushed unionized branches under as employees left due to lack of work, until branches had to shut down all together.
Around this era, subcontracting and owner-operator practices were also increasingly taken advantage of by employers, increasing the difficulty of worker unionization and weakening employer accountability for labor violations. By using subcontracting, employees are less likely to have an influence on their allotted pay, are more likely to absorb costs of errors, are not entitled to fringe benefits, and—due to the freelance nature of the work—cannot unionize. Subcontracting is prominent in construction, agriculture, trucking, and meatpacking with domestic workers also qualified as independent contractors. The weakening of unions in these sectors allowed for underpayment, and for employees to absorb employer’s cost deficits. Owner-operator practices are also a form of independent contracting in the trucking sector where it is popular for truckers to own and pay repair prices on their own vehicles while also working on contracted pay.
As a result of union busting, direct employer accountability and employee expectations degraded, loosening maintenance of appropriate labor standards. Labor right accountability—if not by union, strike, or other concerted actions—could otherwise be sought by employees through the government. But, government enforcement of labor law became less attainable as these dangerous and underpaid jobs were worked increasingly by immigrants. Unforgiving deportation policy that also removed U.S. citizens from the United States effectively destroyed protections for immigrants to make labor law complaints without fear of deportation.
In applicable sectors, unions became weaker and subcontracting became more popular and U.S. born workers were rejecting these increasingly underpaid, unprotected jobs. These jobs no longer responded to the new prestige of business and desk jobs but also could no longer promise ‘The American Dream’ of real estate, cars, and vacations. To mediate these newfound labor shortages in difficult sectors of labor, employers had to expand their workforce internationally, seeking out migrant workers to keep their businesses afloat.
This precedent had already been set by the Braceros program when post World War II labor shortages threatened agriculture, and a U.S.-Mexico deal guaranteed temporary stay for workers from Mexico to work in U.S. labor forces. While the Braceros program was notorious for its labor violations, it is also important to note that an increased dependence on migrant labor shortly led to the largest mass deportation of ‘undocumented immigrants’ in U.S. history. This mass deportation program–as we continue to see today–lacked any sort of due process, causing deportation of both undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens.
The U.S. maintained dependence on migrant labor in certain sectors, even as mass deportation programs threatened the safety of the very migrant workers who had been sought out by U.S. employers. Mass deportations came as a direct threat to union organizing for migrant laborers and fights for improved labor conditions. With national discriminatory rhetoric and threats of deportation, immigrants faced increased inability to rely on government assistance to protect them from labor rights violations. Threats of job loss and deportation effectively weakened labor rights defenses for the growing numbers of migrant workers. Although, civil rights movements helped to end the Bracero program in 1964 with the Chicano labor movement which became nationally prominent in the 60’s.
It is no surprise then that Alfredo ‘Lelo’ Juarez, a union leader for migrant workers, was detained last March. De-unionization is what has kept labor standards weak, especially for vulnerable workers. With mass deportations, the demand for immigrant labor does not go away, but is just pushed further underground. Workers continue to face increased threats, but are still sought out in high numbers by United States employers. Labor conditions for sectors with labor shortages are not increased, and there is no enforced policy that puts U.S. born workers in those jobs, deflating any potential for the fantasy of a U.S. born workforce. Anti-immigrant sentiment does not eliminate migrant workers from these labor sectors but merely weakens migrant labor protections. In standing up for labor protections and rights in immigrant communities, Lelo’s detention is an example of federal push back on unionized, protected labor. Lelo’s arrest hinges on an alleged 2018 removaI order that–if true–has lacked any legal action since its alleged issuance. Lelo’s arrest was also incredibly violent with ICE agents smashing the window of his car upon his request for a warrant.
And ICE attacks on union leaders are also occurring in New York where pro-union workers on Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms were listed and sought in an ICE raid, conveying planned violence on pro-union workers. The arrest of these workers comes out of years of fight for guarantees to union representation by the UFW in the face of union-busting and intimidation allegations of the Lynn-Ette & Sons Farms owner. Fighting for unionized labor is increasingly important, as is fighting for immigrant rights. The countlessly studied impact of immigration on the labor market merely conveys net positive contributions from immigration, disproving anti-immigrant policy as populist. Anti-immigrant policy and union busting weaken labor market protections for all, especially for migrant workers whose labor is keeping essential sectors of production afloat.
