@ Migrant child labor in the US

[Velar Fricative]

It's one thing to assume or even "know" it's happening in a non-specific sense, but these stories gutted me when I read this over the weekend. I just got an alert that the Biden administration is finally cracking down on this after this expose. Gift link

And before you read the article and assume this is happening in only certain industries or locations...nope. Well-known companies are employing children.

Migrant child labor benefits both under-the-table operations and global corporations, The Times found. In Los Angeles, children stitch “Made in America” tags into J. Crew shirts. They bake dinner rolls sold at Walmart and Target, process milk used in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and help debone chicken sold at Whole Foods. As recently as the fall, middle-schoolers made Fruit of the Loom socks in Alabama. In Michigan, children make auto parts used by Ford and General Motors.

[Velar Fricative]

A few more snippets since it's long and not everyone can read right away:

The growth of migrant child labor in the United States over the past several years is a result of a chain of willful ignorance. Companies ignore the young faces in their back rooms and on their factory floors. Schools often decline to report apparent labor violations, believing it will hurt children more than help. And H.H.S. behaves as if the migrant children who melt unseen into the country are doing just fine.

-------------------


Children have crossed the Southern border on their own for decades, and since 2008, the United States has allowed non-Mexican minors to live with sponsors while they go through immigration proceedings, which can take several years. The policy, codified in anti-trafficking legislation, is intended to prevent harm to children who would otherwise be turned away and left alone in a Mexican border town.

When Kelsey Keswani first worked as an H.H.S. contractor in Arizona to connect unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors in 2010, the adults were almost always the children’s parents, who had paid smugglers to bring them up from Central America, she said.



But around 2014, the number of arriving children began to climb, and their circumstances were different. In recent years, “the kids almost all have a debt to pay off, and they’re super stressed about it,” Ms. Keswani said.



She began to see more failures in the vetting process. “There were so many cases where sponsors had sponsored multiple kids, and it wasn’t getting caught. So many red flags with debt. So many reports of trafficking.”



Now, just a third of migrant children are going to their parents. A majority are sent to other relatives, acquaintances or even strangers, a Times analysis of federal data showed. Nearly half are coming from Guatemala, where poverty is fueling a wave of migration. Parents know that they would be turned away at the border or quickly deported, so they send their children in hopes that remittances will come back.



In the last two years alone, more than 250,000 children have entered the United States by themselves.

[Velar Fricative]

Posting again, but as I was reading my mind kept running with various thoughts:

1) Anyone who thinks a wall can solve this is kidding themselves. Yes, there's been an astronomical rise in children crossing the border but that's not going to suddenly stop. So many Western Hemisphere countries are in shambles, for a variety of reasons. Desperate people are not suddenly going to just stay where they are, and you have to be pretty desperate to send your barely-teen kid on foot to a foreign country so they can make money to support their families left behind. So, we need to come up with better ways to keep these kids safe.

2) Employment expectations, job locations, and consumer demand all require a massive shift if we're here in 2023 talking about hiring kids to stuff cereal boxes.

[pixy0stix]

Feb 27, 2023 15:06:27 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Posting again, but as I was reading my mind kept running with various thoughts:

1) Anyone who thinks a wall can solve this is kidding themselves. Yes, there's been an astronomical rise in children crossing the border but that's not going to suddenly stop. So many Western Hemisphere countries are in shambles, for a variety of reasons. Desperate people are not suddenly going to just stay where they are, and you have to be pretty desperate to send your barely-teen kid on foot to a foreign country so they can make money to support their families left behind. So, we need to come up with better ways to keep these kids safe.

2) Employment expectations, job locations, and consumer demand all require a massive shift if we're here in 2023 talking about hiring kids to stuff cereal boxes.

This has always been a problem with overseas labor but people just don't want to think about it.

[Velar Fricative]

Feb 27, 2023 15:17:51 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

Feb 27, 2023 15:06:27 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Posting again, but as I was reading my mind kept running with various thoughts:

1) Anyone who thinks a wall can solve this is kidding themselves. Yes, there's been an astronomical rise in children crossing the border but that's not going to suddenly stop. So many Western Hemisphere countries are in shambles, for a variety of reasons. Desperate people are not suddenly going to just stay where they are, and you have to be pretty desperate to send your barely-teen kid on foot to a foreign country so they can make money to support their families left behind. So, we need to come up with better ways to keep these kids safe.

2) Employment expectations, job locations, and consumer demand all require a massive shift if we're here in 2023 talking about hiring kids to stuff cereal boxes.

This has always been a problem with overseas labor but people just don't want to think about it.

As soon as I hit post I was like, "Yeah that's already been happening overseas..." but I left it. Sigh. 

[sent]

“Ms. Passalacqua said she saw so many children put to work, and found law enforcement officials so unwilling to investigate these cases, that she largely stopped reporting them.”

I can’t anymore. Every law feels like suggestions these days. Go ahead and break it. Who is going to care? No one apparently.

[pixy0stix]

I can't even think of ways of how we fix this, since everything is broken.

[Deleted]

Feb 27, 2023 15:47:22 GMT -5 sent said:

“Ms. Passalacqua said she saw so many children put to work, and found law enforcement officials so unwilling to investigate these cases, that she largely stopped reporting them.”

I can’t anymore. Every law feels like suggestions these days. Go ahead and break it. Who is going to care? No one apparently.

In case we needed even more confirmation that law enforcement doesn’t consider black and brown people to be people.

[imimahoney]

Awful, just awful.

I read it this weekend and saved the article. I struggle with finding contemporary sources on child labor in the US that my students can connect to. They will be shocked when they read this.

[wanderingback]

Yeah capitalism and consumerism will be the death of us. I don’t see this ever changing unfortunately. Businesses love to make money and people expect 2 day shipping and new clothes every few months (I know this just doesn’t affect the clothing industry, just an example), that it seems like this will continue as it has been and get worse. Horrific.

[SwimDeep]

Feb 27, 2023 17:04:47 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Yeah capitalism and consumerism will be the death of us. I don’t see this ever changing unfortunately. Businesses love to make money and people expect 2 day shipping and new clothes every few months (I know this just doesn’t affect the clothing industry, just an example), that it seems like this will continue as it has been and get worse. Horrific.

this is what I wanted to say, but it's been a day and a half and I'm struggling to think straight.

And I don't think I can say anything else without crumbling into tears. There is so much wrong with capitalism. I've come to hate it more than the patriarchy.

[rubytue]

I read the article this weekend, and I was just down afterward. Lots of emotions.

I think back to the story I’ve heard around when The Jungle was published, and it lead to real reform. And I wonder what it would take today. Because, in many cases, we are no better with labor now. But I feel there is so much if the population that would see this as a “them” problem and not feel any compassion because it would never happen to them. And how far we’ve fallen.

[underwaterrhymes]

This makes me so angry I don’t have enough words.

[Velar Fricative]

Feb 27, 2023 16:38:39 GMT -5 @villainv said:

Feb 27, 2023 15:47:22 GMT -5 sent said:

“Ms. Passalacqua said she saw so many children put to work, and found law enforcement officials so unwilling to investigate these cases, that she largely stopped reporting them.”

I can’t anymore. Every law feels like suggestions these days. Go ahead and break it. Who is going to care? No one apparently.

In case we needed even more confirmation that law enforcement doesn’t consider black and brown people to be people.

Yeah, my first thought was about how many LEOs (not all, I know) are pro-MAGA and shrug their shoulders like “well this is what Democrat voters wanted.”

[rubytue]

Feb 27, 2023 21:10:38 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Feb 27, 2023 16:38:39 GMT -5 @villainv said:

In case we needed even more confirmation that law enforcement doesn’t consider black and brown people to be people.

Yeah, my first thought was about how many LEOs (not all, I know) are pro-MAGA and shrug their shoulders like “well this is what Democrat voters wanted.”

I had similar thoughts reading it. Trying to guess what the MAGA crowd would say, the not small proportion that has disdain for education. 

[bee20]

This is horrific. I'm not done with the article but is there a way to sign up to be a sponsor? I've pondered becoming a foster parent in a few years once I get some of my health issues straightened out. But christ, I could give a kid a better home than this.

[ellipses84]

Feb 27, 2023 19:01:09 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I read the article this weekend, and I was just down afterward. Lots of emotions.

I think back to the story I’ve heard around when The Jungle was published, and it lead to real reform. And I wonder what it would take today. Because, in many cases, we are no better with labor now. But I feel there is so much if the population that would see this as a “them” problem and not feel any compassion because it would never happen to them. And how far we’ve fallen.

The Jungle was on my reading list since college and I finally read it at the start of Covid lockdown. I generally knew what it was the history of, but it’s so much more relevant after the last few years. I think everyone should read or re-read it now. Looking solely at statistics of poor, middle class and rich wealth, the country is going back towards that level of inequity. Pay hasn’t kept up with inflation, labor protections and social safety nets are eroding, there’s less unions, etc.

There are movements and discussions happening about this, primarily with Millennial and GenZ demographics. I saw something on social media talking about how $100k was such a “you’ve made it, you’re rich milestone” for so long and how although it’s way above many people’s incomes, most families barely make ends meet with that. $100k in 1980 would be $363k today ($228k in 1990 and $173k in 2000).

The migrant children issues are difficult to solve with the infrastructure we have in place right now. If we had better immigration policies so families could legally work here and not be separated from their children, enforcement for kids to be educated instead of turning a blind eye to child labor, a better foster care system for kids who arrive alone, and universal healthcare that would be an improvement.

[rikki]

Feb 27, 2023 19:01:09 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I read the article this weekend, and I was just down afterward. Lots of emotions.

I think back to the story I’ve heard around when The Jungle was published, and it lead to real reform. And I wonder what it would take today. Because, in many cases, we are no better with labor now. But I feel there is so much if the population that would see this as a “them” problem and not feel any compassion because it would never happen to them. And how far we’ve fallen.

Exactly - what it would take today would be for little blonde haired Susie and blue eyed Billy to be the ones working night shifts, risking their lives, blowing out Cheeto colored snot, and missing school. Then MAYBE it would matter.

[sent]

If Cheeto dust is so horrible for the employees to work with, do we really need flaming hot Cheetos and the other 68 varieties of Cheetos in our lives? No. We’ve gone too far.