Putting The ‘I’ In Immigrant: Now more than ever, immigrant work is essential work

Among the day-to-day changes that this year has brought, when I now video call my parents,  they are practically indiscernible. Under the disposable surgical gowns and the extensive layers of facial coverings, they resemble not themselves but the millions of health care professionals around the nation, searching within themselves daily for the Herculean effort necessary to help those in need.

The price is high, but the reward is worth their while, I am told. 

The development of this pandemic has placed inordinate amounts of stress upon the nation’s workforce, but immigrant workers have always been “essential” to the livelihood of our communities. From the immigrant farm workers travailing through hot days in the sun to my parents’ promoting United States health as a personal mission, it’s almost paradoxical to entertain the negative stereotyping of immigrants in the United States. 

This past week, I saw a series of images in The Guardian of farmers in California, and they only served to solidify the essential nature of immigrant work. Against a backdrop of orange-tinted skies, farm workers picked fresh produce as ash was carried down by the scorching late-summer air. The world as we know it today relies on the more than 381,000 farmworkers yielding the produce we use in our daily meals. 

The recent wildfires brushing up and down the West Coast have been devastating for us all, but for those whose day jobs ensure their communities have food on the table, the situation becomes a double-edged sword: choosing between their health and their paycheck, along with the fate of the U.S. food supply. 

My own job as a restaurant host became an essential service in March, though it remains a humble entry-level position. The hour requirements and precautionary measures involved with my two part-time gigs changed drastically in the spring and have remained this way ever since. 

The changing landscape of the U.S. workforce relies so heavily on immigrant labor and we would be remiss as a country and as a community to dismiss this demographic so easily. Immigrant work is essential work, no matter how small or large the task at hand. 

In seeing the news clips and knowing what it is to be an immigrant worker in the United States, it gave me pause — why did I feel the need to emphasize and defend this idea? The idea of an immigrant worker in the United States has long held a negative connotation. 

I know this because I’ve heard it said to me, and I’ve heard it said about others like me. The rhetoric that immigrant laborers rob the born-and-bred U.S. citizen of job opportunities is one that has held a lot of weight with me. 

I have heard countless iterations of this sentiment, of the many subtle microaggressions toward immigrants that stand on shaky, emotion-driven bases. As a natural-born citizen who came to the United States as a young girl, I was grateful to have the background to see both sides. 

In sitting with this thought and reading what I could about it, what I found was that the harmful dialogue directed toward immigrants stems from a fear of the unknown. Masked under the guise of nationalism and spurred by provocative speech in the media, this current of thought is unfounded and lacks factual evidence. 

The popular talking points have all but been debunked in recent years. In a Public Broadcasting Service article I read, writer Gretchen Frazee brought together a culmination of resources that explore the most widely circulated myths about immigration. From the words of high-ranking university professors and bipartisan research organizations, the evidence depicted a very different scenario than what was being presented in media sources. 

The article reported that immigrant workers were more likely to take up professions not largely desired by natural-born citizens. Additionally, the New American Economy found a 15% higher likelihood that immigrant laborers would work unusual hours as compared to their natural-born U.S. counterparts. The figurative theft of U.S. jobs is a tactic intended to divide, because immigrants actually complement their natural-born colleagues by filling in gaps in the workforce. 

Now more than ever, immigrant work is vital to the health of our economy and our communities. Immigrant laborers make up a very large part of our communities’ unsung heroes, and their work is undoubtedly significant in the adjustment from our pre-pandemic lives to society as it operates today. 

While denigrating comments might be said here and there about those who carry out the work, it is unarguable that immigrants are essential to how this country runs. Whether you hold those sentiments or not, it would be worth our while to consider the sacrifices people of our communities make with us in mind. 

The individual who picked the food you eat, the one who manufactured the clothes you wear and the health care worker who carried out your coronavirus test may very well be immigrant workers. An adjective shouldn’t change the value of essential work and essential people. 

Noelle Natividad is a sophomore writing about the immigrant experience in America. Her column, “Putting The ‘I’ In Immigrant,” runs every other Friday.