Catherwood LibraryILR School

In California, nearly six percent of the workforce is comprised of undocumented workers who fill essential positions in the agriculture, construction, and manufacturing sectors. However, data shows that the undocumented status of these workers makes it more likely for them to be working in exploitative environments without benefits like unemployment and health care, which places them in vulnerable economic positions. Some workers have described not being paid their full wages during the pandemic, nor having the legal protections to dispute the withheld wages, while others have illustrated the high death toll the pandemic had on the immigrant population. Labor advocates recommend increasing paths to citizenship as a way to address these issues, but this has been disputed in the federal legislature. There have also been recent efforts to address the disparities regarding the large percentages of noncitizen workers living below the living wage in California, like the Excluded Workers Pilot Program, but these have not yet been actualized.