There is roughly 11.7 million immigrants are illegally living in the United States. It is worth noting that not all high-immigrant occupations are lower-wage and lower-skilled. For example, 44 percent of medical scientists are immigrants, as is 34 percent of software engineers, 27 percent of physicians, and 25 percent of chemists. Over one-quarter of physicians and surgeons (27 percent) were foreign born, as was more than one out of every five (22 percent) people working in healthcare support occupations like nursing, psychiatric, and home health aides.
Of the roughly one million farmhand in the United States, a bulk are foreigners, and an estimated one-fourth to one-half of them are illegal. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration …show more content…
29, the day the law went into effect, to learn that many of his employees were missing. Terrified and worried, he drove an hour and a half north to Tuscaloosa, where many of the immigrants who worked for him lived. Rhodes, who does not speak Spanish, struggled to get across how much he needed them. He urged his workers to come back. Only a handful of employees did.
“We couldn’t explain to them that some of the things they were scared of weren’t going to happen,” Randy Rhodes says. “I wanted them to see that I was their friend, and that we were trying to do the right thing.”
His former employees joined by thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, construction workers, and chicken plant employees, who have left Alabama for other states. Many employers, like Rhodes, who lost workers followed the federal requirements, some even used the E-Verify system, and only found out their workers were illegal when they …show more content…
“Somebody has to figure this out. The immigrants aren’t coming back to Alabama—they’re gone,” Rhodes says. “I have 158 jobs, and I need to give them to somebody.”
There is little shortage of people he could give those jobs. In Alabama, over 211,000 people are out of work. In rural Perry County, where the factory of Harvest Select is located, the rate of unemployment is 18.2 percent, twice the national average.
One of the largest selling points of the immigration law was that it would free up jobs that Republican Governor Robert Bentley said immigrants have stolen from recession-battered Americans. Yet native Alabamians have not come running to fill these newly opened positions. Many employers think the law is ludicrous and fought to stop it. Immigrants aren’t stealing anything from anyone, they say. Businesses turned to foreign labor only because they couldn’t find enough Americans to take the work they were offering.
Tomato sorters and farmhand at Ellen Jenkins’s farm in northern Alabama, headed into the fields at 7 a.m., and haven’t stopped for more than the few seconds it takes to swig some water. They’ll work until 6 p.m., earning 2 dollars for each 25 pound basket they fill. The men figure they’ll take home around $60
Of the roughly one million farmhand in the United States, a bulk are foreigners, and an estimated one-fourth to one-half of them are illegal. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration …show more content…
29, the day the law went into effect, to learn that many of his employees were missing. Terrified and worried, he drove an hour and a half north to Tuscaloosa, where many of the immigrants who worked for him lived. Rhodes, who does not speak Spanish, struggled to get across how much he needed them. He urged his workers to come back. Only a handful of employees did.
“We couldn’t explain to them that some of the things they were scared of weren’t going to happen,” Randy Rhodes says. “I wanted them to see that I was their friend, and that we were trying to do the right thing.”
His former employees joined by thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, construction workers, and chicken plant employees, who have left Alabama for other states. Many employers, like Rhodes, who lost workers followed the federal requirements, some even used the E-Verify system, and only found out their workers were illegal when they …show more content…
“Somebody has to figure this out. The immigrants aren’t coming back to Alabama—they’re gone,” Rhodes says. “I have 158 jobs, and I need to give them to somebody.”
There is little shortage of people he could give those jobs. In Alabama, over 211,000 people are out of work. In rural Perry County, where the factory of Harvest Select is located, the rate of unemployment is 18.2 percent, twice the national average.
One of the largest selling points of the immigration law was that it would free up jobs that Republican Governor Robert Bentley said immigrants have stolen from recession-battered Americans. Yet native Alabamians have not come running to fill these newly opened positions. Many employers think the law is ludicrous and fought to stop it. Immigrants aren’t stealing anything from anyone, they say. Businesses turned to foreign labor only because they couldn’t find enough Americans to take the work they were offering.
Tomato sorters and farmhand at Ellen Jenkins’s farm in northern Alabama, headed into the fields at 7 a.m., and haven’t stopped for more than the few seconds it takes to swig some water. They’ll work until 6 p.m., earning 2 dollars for each 25 pound basket they fill. The men figure they’ll take home around $60