COVID-19 has introduced a new term into American households: “essential worker.” To many who have spent decades fighting to acknowledge the value of frontline and low-wage workers, the acknowledgement is long overdue. As it turns out, even at a time when federal policy becomes increasingly hostile to immigration, foreign-born workers are playing a vital role in holding up the American economy.
Of the almost 49 million essential workers on the frontlines of today’s pandemic, nearly 6 million are immigrants, working as physicians, home health aides, farm employees, grocery store clerks, delivery drivers, and more.
In certain regions and industries, the percentage of immigrant essential workers is even larger. In Wisconsin, for example, immigrant workers process an estimated 80 percent of milk. Similarly, in New York State, the epicenter of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak, at least one in three healthcare workers is an immigrant. In California, immigrants make up one third of all essential workers. And nationally, at least half of all farm field workers and 80 percent of meat processing workers — people we rely on to pick and process our food — are undocumented immigrants.
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