The Risks Undocumented Workers Are Facing During the COVID-19 Pandemic
In a new video, a worker from Guatemala discusses his anxieties about losing work, being excluded from the federal relief program, and the risks of seeking medical attention.
Sheltering in place, a public-health necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, is a luxury rarely afforded to the working classes. For millions of Americans, staying at home has meant losing their job—or jobs—and struggling to feed their children, pay their rent, and cover the bills. For E.C., an undocumented maintenance worker from Guatemala, it has also meant being unable to rely on the government’s relief aid, despite having paid taxes and living in the United States for more than two decades. If he is stricken with the disease, the question for him won’t be when to seek medical attention but whether to seek it at all—he’ll have to carefully weigh the risks of going bankrupt, facing deportation, or being detained and separated from his family. As he says in a video interview with The New Yorker, “If we get sick or something, how will we go to the hospital?”