Immigration: Immigrant Women and Jobs

“The less fortunate, isolated and apprehensive, suffer a dismaying array of abuses from exploitively low wages to sexual harassment”.

What Immigrant Women Workers go through

to Find a Job and What They Experience While Working

Women all over have suffered a lot during the 1900’s they had to put up with tons of hardships and made ends meet. These women migrated from different parts of the world to be able to live a better life, but instead got a result they weren’t accepting. These women do not have a choice sometimes, they don’t have any education, and they don’t speak fluent english therefore they can’t get jobs they would desire. They instead get a job that they much rather not have and get paid less than what they deserve. Women live in poverty, but work day and night to be able to pay rent, care for their children, and help their families back home.

This is the latest pole from around the world for immigrant women:

“The poll reveals that many female immigrants (79 percent of them from Latin American countries, 73 percent from Vietnam, 70 percent from Korea and 63 percent from China) said that in addition to speaking little or no English, they were discriminated against, lacked health care coverage and were paid less—far less than what they earned professionally in their home countries”.

Why immigrant Women move to the U.S.:

“At a time when more than one-third of U.S. families are single-parent households, 90 percent of women immigrants are raising children in intact marriages.”

Better education for their children

“Women immigrants reveal that they came to America not in search of streets paved with gold—making money was surprisingly low on their list of priorities—but because they saw the U.S. as a place to build better futures for their children and to make permanent homes for their families,” Close said.

Some have to travel to support their families back home
Widows
Divorced
Homeless
They don't work in homeland
Have no Family Left

I was never rich financially, but wealthy in love. I loved my husband more than anything in the world. We had seven children, the oldest is now thirteen…after years of hard work, my husband developed consumption…. My husband told me he had opened a small business in Colorado, and hoped to make a living. But I heard him cough, and when I questioned him, he answered with a bitter smile that there was no cure for his illness. I immediately saw my tragedy and wouldn't let him work. I went out peddling with a basket, and left him at home with my children."

Why Immigrant women don’t get paid what they should:

Education
Language skills

“Lack of knowledge and language barriers may make these women more vulnerable to abuse, harassment, discrimination and worse”

They don’t have legal documents
They don’t have any experience

“Immigrant women often face serious challenges in the workplace, the schools, and in dealing with health and social services”.

What type of jobs they get hired for:

Cleaners
Domestic Workers
Baby Sitters
Fields

“Close to Slavery” estimates that an estimated 121,000 guest workers were brought into the U.S. in 2005 for work that is categorized as “unskilled.” Of this number, about 32,000 worked in agriculture, and the rest—approximately 89,000—worked in forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction, and other non-agricultural industries"

Verbal and Physical Abuse immigrant women face during work:

"Chained to Their Employers"

The can’t complain about overworking

“threatened with deportation if they complain about overwork”

Sleep in closets and worse conditions because of employers demand
Sexual Harassment

"These people can be very, very vulnerable, particularly if they're not documented”

What Women Have to Say about their Jobs:

“We Have Been Treated Like Animals”
"We were told that hundreds, if not thousands, of women had to have sex with supervisors to get or keep jobs and/or put up with a constant barrage of grabbing and touching and propositions for sex by supervisors."
"Trapped in Dangerous Jobs"
"The boss took our passports and kept them"