Full Citation

Title: Essential but Disposable: Undocumented Workers and Their Mixed-Status Families

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2020

ISBN:

ISSN:

DOI:

NSFID:

PMCID:

PMID:

Abstract: Natural disasters uncover deep inequities and vulnerabilities in societies, but they also create possibilities for important change. The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a triple crisis of a public health catastrophe, an economic shutdown, and a racial inequality backlash, an acute confluence of challenges for Los Angeles County, California, and the United States. This multicrisis has revealed not only that racial health inequities are widespread but also that Brown and Black workers are especially vulnerable to income and job loss. In addition, discriminatory federal government policies deny COVID-19 relief and resources to undocumented workers and their family members, which include US citizens and legal permanent residents. The federal government treats these workers as disposable while considering most of them essential to economic recovery. In this report, we show that the COVID-19 crisis exposes not only deep underlying health and social inequities but also government responses to the pandemic that are worsening these inequities and undercutting economic recovery. Modeling the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis reveals how this vicious cycle of systemic discrimination can be reversed by policies that lead to a more racially equitable and economically sustainable recovery. No group has been affected more by the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis than undocumented workers and their mixed-status families. This report finds that despite being the demographic group most concentrated in employment sectors determined by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to be “essential and critical” to the economy, undocumented immigrants receive the lowest wages, are most concentrated in jobs with high risk of exposure to the virus, and face the highest unemployment rates in the country. Although undocumented workers and their mixed-status families are disproportionately vulnerable, the Trump administration, Congress, and state legislatures have systemically excluded them from most government relief packages. As a new wave of the coronavirus hits most of the United States, forcing governments to pause or reverse reopening plans, this report advocates for broad benefits that include undocumented workers and their families in any future relief and stimulus packages. First, we establish that undocumented immigrants are fundamental to the economy by providing estimates of the economic contributions of undocumented workers and their families to gross domestic product (GDP), employment, and taxes in the United States, California, and Los Angeles. Second, we show how the COVID-19 recession has disproportionately affected the employment and earnings of undocumented workers while denying them access to unemployment and pandemic relief, exacerbating Latinx vulnerability while slowing down economic recovery. Third, we provide estimates of the likely positive economic spillovers that would result from making undocumented workers eligible for relief policies at the federal and state levels.

Url: https://irle.ucla.edu/2020/08/10/essentialworkers/

User Submitted?: No

Authors: Hinojosa-Ojeda, Raul; Robinson, Sherman

Publisher:

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Health, Population Health and Health Systems, Poverty and Welfare, Race and Ethnicity

Countries: