Immigrant Labor and Civil Rights in the United States

Abstract

Immigration has been the subject of intense political debate in the United States for decades. It is consistently a high policy priority for presidential administrations, a subject of endless stalled action from the U.S. Congress, and an issue that ultimately fuels mass anti-immigrant rhetoric such as the idea that immigrants take away domestic jobs. This paper addresses the intersection of immigration and labor in the U.S. and refutes such rhetoric as inaccurate and grossly misinformed. In reality, immigrant laborers, regardless of legal status, are indispensable contributors to the U.S. economy and endure arbitrary U.S. immigration laws and policies that enable repeated violations to their fundamental human rights.