Immigrant Housecleaners in Freefall
New America Media, News Report, Leslie Casimir, Posted: Apr 16, 2009
Editor’s Note: Domestic workers are the first to be let go as professionals tighten their household budgets in this recession. Many are so desperate for work that they are willing to work for less than they need to make ends meet.
Since losing four of her seven cleaning jobs this year, housekeeper Veronica Nieto has started looking through trash -- plucking out recyclable cans and bottles for cash to make the rent. The mother of three rarely shops for groceries anymore. Instead, she visits three food banks for staples such as rice, beans, and onions. She stopped her cable service.
“When I think about this situation, my back hurts, my head hurts,” said Nieto, 36, one of thousands of domestic workers, who said that since the economy tanked, her life has been in a freefall. “I never thought this would happen to me.”
She isn’t alone. A record 5.84 million people now are collecting unemployment benefits, an unprecedented figure amid the worst economic crisis to hit the United States since the Depression.
But Nieto, a San Francisco resident of nine years and other domestic workers who clean homes for a living, are not included in this staggering figure. An undocumented immigrant, Nieto has toiled in the shadows of the underground economy, performing the backbreaking work of scrubbing toilets and floors. She reckons she will have to suffer the consequences of unemployment in the dark, as well.
“What can I do?” she asked.
Her husband, also undocumented and an unemployed construction laborer, is worse off. Depressed, he sits at home and watches TV, described Nieto, who is more concerned about her husband’s despondent condition than her own predicament.
“I have never seen him like this,” said Nieto, her eyes tearing up. “He has always been the one who sustained the household. He said if we continue like this, we’re going to have to leave for Mexico.”
Layoffs of housecleaners have skyrocketed in recent months. As professionals continue to lose their jobs and tighten their household budgets, maids are the first ones to be let go, said Altagracia Garcia, an organizer with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.
“It’s been a domino effect,” Garcia said. “Household workers are disposable right now.”
From New York to San Francisco, the complaints that there are no jobs have been coming in from this often silent and invisible workforce – estimated in the hundreds of thousands in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago alone. Cleaning homes is one of the most lucrative jobs for an immigrant woman with limited English-speaking skills, said Andrea Cristina Mercado, the lead organizer of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a grassroots Latina organization in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Even before the recession hit, housecleaners endured some of the lowest wages in the country. Now, some say they are working for almost nothing.
Among the half-dozen women interviewed, many say they are scrambling to avoid evictions, with some moving in with friends and others squatting in foreclosed homes. Many women say they are selling homemade tamales and other handicrafts on the street to make ends meet and relying on their families and churches for donated clothes, emergency cash and food.
Jill Shenker, lead organizer at the San Francisco Day Labor Program Women's Collective of La Raza Centro Legal, said many women have stopped complaining about workplace abuses altogether because they now fear losing the few jobs that are out there.
“One woman is getting paid $70 for 10 hours of work -- a clear violation of minimum wage,” Shenker said. “But people are now willing to take those jobs because the recession has made a bad situation worse.”
Silvia Medina, 38, who lives in Brooklyn, is one of the housekeepers who managed to escape unemployment by working more hours for less pay. She used to earn $120 for doing the laundry, ironing, and cleaning for a family of seven twice a week. Now that same household pays her $70, she said. And she accepts it.
“This work is so undervalued,” said Medina, a single mom of two. “But I know about the soup kitchens in the churches that give out free food. I go to those places now to complete my meals.”
Photo by Leslie Casimir.
Leslie Casimir can be reached at lcasimir@newamericamedia.org
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Surviving on Cardboard
Asian Elder Recyclers Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place
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User Comments
Nezua on Apr 22, 2009 at 13:20:48 said:
Ah, it's the same old losers spewing hate at real Americans who work hard to help themselves and others around them and make the country more productive. Meanwhile, pampered computer surfers with bellyfuls of bile hover over light-splashed pages hungering for power and dominance over an imaginary foe....
a normal person with a sense of compassion and humanity on Apr 17, 2009 at 17:06:05 said:
I am horrified by the comments others have posted in response to this article. Why are you attacking someone who eats at soup kitchens and gets exploited? Do you know anything about the conditions that many immigrants leave behind, which are far worse than their conditions in the US? I am sorry you don't have jobs right now, I am amongst those that do physical work and barely get by. But I work side by side with Mexican and Guatemalan immigrants who are forced to work longer hours than me for less pay and are treated like animals and children by the same employer who pays me more as an American citizen. At no time do I think that I am any more deserving than they are, and I recognize their struggle to survive in this country as EXPLOITED WORKERS. They deserve justice and fair wages just as I do, because we are both HUMAN BEINGS. So let go of your white supremacy and American entitlement, and start thinking about solutions for the economic dignity of every person, no matter where they were born. Why don't you start your own businesses, if you're so smart? Why are you expecting people to hire you because you're white and speak English? This is a country of IMMIGRANTS, unless you're Native American, maybe your ancestors should have gone "back to where they came from."
Buzzm1 on Apr 17, 2009 at 07:54:15 said:
ALL ILLEGALS NEED TO GO!!
THE SOONER, THE BETTER!!
ENFORCE OUR LAWS AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION!!!
THERE WILL BE NO AMNESTY!!!
OUR ACCEPTABLE IMMIGRATION REFORM
#1. Make Illegal Entry a Felony Permanently Barring Citizenship
#2. Secure Our Borders with our National Guard!!!
#3. Mandate E-Verify for ALL Employees!!!
#4. Cut Off ALL Public Assistance to Illegals and Their Children!!!
#5. Stop the Underground Economy!!!
#6. End Birthright Citizenship for Illegals!!!
#7. End Chain Migration!!!
#8. Make English our Official Language!!!
#9. Cut Off Federal Funds to Sanctuary Cities!!
NOTHING MORE!!! NOTHING LESS!!!
GPdr on Apr 16, 2009 at 22:13:56 said:
My prayers are with this person. But I have to say the "backbreaking" phrase caught my eye too, having cleaned houses during college, and having cleaned my own home all my life. Toilets, floors, and all. With the exception of one period when I was ill, and hired an American at 10/hour while liberal-progressive friends were paying a Mexican woman 4/hour. This was long before anyone was talking about how many people were here illegally, and the only thing I thought at the time was, "I don't think I could live with myself paying a person that little." Now I've been out of work looking for a job for some time and can't get hired -- either overqualified or unqualified and always too old and too much of a single American mom. The other week I was in a Barnes and Noble that threw my application, degree listed and all, on a pile (probably in the garbage), and never called me, only to be greeted at the cash register by a man with a Russian accent. I would also like to mention that we haven't had cable television in a long, long time and we are very concerned about health care. I have some coverage through the state, but we can't even get an appointment for another six months, and the other day, when I called, the phone receptionist could barely understand what I was talking about regarding my medical complaint, because English was her second language. Yes, I can answer phones, and I can type. But I don't think middle-aged American moms who are English speakers with college degrees, and who actually understand something about medicine, are being interviewed.
nativessayno on Apr 16, 2009 at 10:56:25 said:
Housekeeping is hardly "backbreaking" work...it IS taxing physical labor. An actual backbreaking labor is construction work...the other market taken over by illegal workers (in which the subject's husband worked).
-->As a young woman I did domestic work while still in high school and as my first work after graduation. I was a mother's helper and later had my own informal freelance apartment/house cleaning ......AT NO TIME WAS I CONSIDERED A FIGURE OF FORLORN PITY...no one was in awe of my "backbreaking" work performances and initiative. They did appreciate my work and paid me and tipped me at a reasonable rate.
I guess you have to be an illegal foreign worker to gain pity points for this work today...just because you work hard....others are just average hard workers (?)
Instead of sponge off of our needed social welfare programs designed for US citizen's maybe she should consider a job path in her own country and take responsibility for the choices she made in sneaking over here to impress us all with her feats of "backbreaking" labors.
Your editorial bias make her into some sort of mythical and absurdly heroic victim.
Ever write like this about citizens?.....