Are Democrats against child labor or not?
Conn Carroll
When presidents don’t enforce our nation’s immigration laws, every community is a border community. And nowhere is that more true than in New Bedford, Massachusetts, as Frontline viewers found out recently after an episode about child labor in the city’s seafood processing plants.
Frontline’s story focused on two migrant cousins from Guatemala referred to as “Nathaniel” and “Joel,” although those are not their real names. The two teenagers, ages 14 and 16, respectively, left their home country because gangs were trying to force them to sell drugs, according to Frontline, although Frontline never explained why the presence of these gangs forced them to go all the way to the United States and not stop in any of the other countries along their journey.
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Once they illegally crossed the border near Tijuana, the boys were arrested by Border Patrol and then, as is President Joe Biden’s policy, released into the custody of a sponsor, in this case, Nathaniel’s sister, who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. (Frontline never mentioned if she also left Guatemala because gangs were trying to force her to sell drugs.)
Once settled in Providence, the two teenagers immediately procured fake identifications and applied for work at a staffing agency that found them jobs at a crab processing plant nearby. The teenagers said they often worked 12-hour days for $16.50 an hour. “Over time, doing it every day, the body can’t take it,” Joel told Frontline.
Despite being charged $12 a day for a van ride to the plant, the two boys never complained about their jobs to the authorities. “If we complained, we thought we would be fired,” Joel said. “The adults they worked with didn’t complain, either. We just followed their lead. If they didn’t speak up, we didn’t speak up.”
But an immigration activist eventually blew the whistle. The plant owner told Frontline it wasn’t his fault he employed underage workers. Both the boys and the staffing agency lied to him.
“It isn’t like I hired this person,” the plant owner told Frontline, “but the staffing agency sent that person to my building. And yes, that person worked in my building. I can’t deny that. But sometimes, I have 150 people working in my building, and they all wear hairnets and face masks. So it’s pretty hard to tell an 18-year-old from a 16-year-old.”
And the reality is these children are coming to the U.S. to work. “All of the teens said they had to work to pay debts to smugglers and send money home to their families,” Frontline admitted. But then, Frontline turned to an immigration activist who pleaded, “I really hope that the government understands that opening up work permits and a pathway to citizenship is the way to do this.”
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But how do work permits solve a child labor problem? These children are not supposed to be working at all. If we give them work permits, we will be undermining our nation’s own child labor laws.
So which is it? Do Democrats want to stop child labor, or do they want to let migrant children work legally? They can’t have it both ways.