What it means to be an Undocumented Worker in the United States

Abstract

In recent decades, the United States government enacted immigration policies that transformed migrant workers into undocumented immigrants. Illegality is a highly racialized status, as more than half of Mexican and Central American people in the U.S. are undocumented. Immigration laws that purport to be color-blind recreate older racial and ethnic discriminatory systems. Today, being an undocumented immigrant in the United States has repercussions far beyond administrative status. Immigration enforcement agencies and employers utilize the threat of deportation to suppress the efforts of workers to organize for improved working conditions. In this way, illegality functions to maintain a fearful and compliant workforce. The U.S. government enforces immigration policies that dehumanize and commodify millions of people, and relegate millions of workers to the most vulnerable occupations in exploitative industries.