Last week, San Diego saw the conclusion of a case that underscores the danger some immigrant workers face.
Cindy Mydung Luu and Jason Luu, sister-and-brother owners of two Rancho Bernardo nail salons, were sentenced Wednesday to three months in prison after threatening their cousin’s immigration status and stealing her wages.
Their cousin, a Vietnamese immigrant, arrived in the U.S. on a student visa before applying for a green card. However, the business owners withheld the card to force her to work excessive hours at the salon every day all while withholding all of her earnings and preventing her from socializing with anyone.
The disturbing case provides an example of just how vulnerable many immigrant workers are in the U.S.
Ian Seruelo is the labor representative for the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium and a member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance San Diego. He’s also an attorney who specializes in immigration law, as well as labor and employment law.
“I see a lot of this,” Seruelo said. “It’s very common, it happens underground, behind the scenes, and that is the very egregious part of it. This kind of exploitation is happening too often.”
There is no shortage of examples of these abuses.
In 2015, New York Times reporter Sarah Maslin Nir led an investigation examining the New York nail salon industry and discovered that most of the 150 workers the Times interviewed were paid below minimum wage or unpaid entirely. The Times also documented a litany of abuses workers suffered, as well as increased health risks associated with the grueling work with chemicals.
Just last year the Center for Public Integrity thoroughly looked into wage theft, analyzing Labor Department and U.S. Census Bureau data. Reporters Susan Ferriss and Joe Yerardi found that industries with higher percentages of foreign-born workers had higher rates of wage theft. This included agriculture, building maintenance, hotel work, construction, nursing homes, and cut-and-sew garment assembly — a sector that has the second-highest rate of federal wage violations over the last 15 years, and more than 42 percent of all workers are immigrants.
Undocumented workers are especially vulnerable to employer exploitation and labor trafficking, but the power dynamics at play also threaten those working in the U.S. on visas.
Employees, immigrant and nonimmigrant alike, may fear reprisal from their employer for reporting wrongdoing. But for immigrant workers, that reprisal can be even more perilous, with employers potentially using the threat of deportation to coerce silence.
This is a fear for both undocumented workers and those who may be in the U.S. on a visa, Seruelo said, because employers may work to revoke the visa or argue an individual violated it.
In the case of undocumented workers, employers are also better equipped to withstand the consequences of an immigration violation given they have means, and the punishment they face won’t lead to them being expelled from the U.S.
Family dynamics, isolating work like that in a home or a caregiving setting, and the fact that immigrants might find themselves in an unfamiliar situation contribute to the vulnerability, Seruelo said.
“What can be common for both groups (undocumented and documented) is they’re outside of their usual circle, and they really try to be under the radar,” he said. “So, they tend to simply say yes to whatever the employer or agency asks because of fear of the unknown, and the threat of being deported is common to those who are undocumented and those who are documented.”
Seruelo said one effort that can help combat the problem lies in advocating for greater separation between local law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, an action SDIRC has pushed for at the state level for years.
Labor laws are generally supposed to protect people regardless of immigration status, but if an immigrant fears local enforcement may be working with ICE, the person might not report a labor violation.
On the federal level another action that could make a difference, according to Seruelo, is expanding the limits on how many visas are issued to victims of crimes. For instance victims of trafficking, be it human trafficking or labor trafficking, under certain situations are eligible for a T-visa, providing them immigration status that allows them to stay in the country as they assist prosecutors.
However, T-visas are capped at 5,000 a year, and the backlog is thousands more than that, Seruelo said. So increasing that cap could make a big difference in the ability of immigrants to report labor-related crimes.
And lastly on the local level, Seruelo said one can a local advocacy group or human rights group, such as the dozens involved with SDIRC, to fight abuse. Or they may even be able to make a difference by being observant of their surroundings.
Seruelo recalled a case where a Filipino immigrant was working as a caregiver for more than two decades without being paid. That case came to light because the victim’s employer became ill, and when the caregiver brought the employer to the hospital a nurse observed, among other things, how malnourished the caregiver was and intervened.
“It was only through that intervention where we discovered this person was a slave in the household,” Seruelo said. “Those are extreme cases, but unfortunately they are definitely still happening.”
