Illegal immigrants in the U.S. tend to avoid contact with authorities out of fear of being caught and deported. In the construction industry, this reluctance has left them with a disproportionate risk of injury or death. Fearful of reporting unsafe working conditions, they are vulnerable to negligent and abusive employers.
For these workers, President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration could be a game changer. By protecting more than four million undocumented immigrants from deportation and offering the prospect of work permits to some, it provides undocumented construction workers the leverage needed to fight for safer working conditions. The result could be far fewer deaths on job sites.
A 2010 study by Xiuwen Sue Dong, Yurong Men and Knut Ringen in the American Journal of Internal Medicine found Hispanic construction workers were almost 30 percent more likely to get work-related injuries than their white counterparts across the U.S., after controlling for risk factors such as age or type of work. In New York state, immigrants accounted for 60 percent of all fall-related deaths or injuries between 2003 and 2011, according to the Center for Popular Democracy—a disproportionately high percentage for their share of the workforce. Since incidents involving undocumented immigrants often go unreported, their injury risk is likely to be significantly higher.
