“Healthcare for all? Even immigrants?! Who are these people?” might be dialogue out of a political cartoon, but without failure, all immigrants in the United States endure a denial of rights in everyday life. Citizenship affords people a position of power immigrants can only spend their days dreaming about, toiling away at a better life for generations following. The United States is frequently referred to as a “melting pot” of diversity, as a place where people of all ethnicities can congregate to work towards an idealized American dream. Impoverished refugees flee war-torn nations and seek shelter in the US for a chance of a better life, but are instantly thrown into a big-business capitalist system where they grow poorer. Although an array of figures and facts continue to persist around immigrants and their contributions, these individuals have to continuously tolerate American society’s abuses and injustices – from working in dangerous conditions to low wages to employer retaliation to threats of deportation.
The political cartoon demonstrates the lackluster conditions working-class immigrants face in light of a pandemic due to a range of vulnerabilities such as less stable employment conditions. Facing persecutions in their motherland, which are often initiated by imperialist countries themselves, immigrants in poverty travel through various bus stops in life. Whether undocumented or as refugees, immigrants defy political borders to cultivate a nurturing life for their family in another country. They are handed the dirty work: blue-collar, minimum-wage jobs –– immigrants are the backbone of the United States. The policies around immigration are designed to condition generations of immigrants to subservience and fear with little to no expectations of gratification or reform. Poised to hinder the voice of multiculturalism, immigrants are seen as arrivants, not citizens, and thus do not deserve the rights of citizenship despite their significance in the formation of labour systems. Meek, they sit at the next bus stop of life, and peacefully question the government about their rights and protections, but receive no improvement in their quality of living.
Depicted in the cartoon is a scruffed, balding white man in a business suit reading a magazine as he goes about his day. The magazine’s cover seems to be of yet another old white man in glasses pointing and screeching about social issues, likely meant to represent Bernie Sanders. In the duration of his two campaigns, Bernie was known for being a liberal politician promising free healthcare for all citizens and immigrants. A large part of his election strategy was focusing on social welfare targeting working-class Americans, and therefore American liberals were appealed by his ideas. Though established Democrats like Joe Biden somewhat opposed right-wing policy, they advocated more for free-market capitalism to promote the middle-class.
The bald white man working a corporate job opens his white-centric newspaper and his gaze drops on an article about free healthcare and social benefits for the poor. At his side is a towering white woman in business attire, shocked after flipping through her phone and reading a similar topic. He scoffs, disgruntled. In his eyes, he has achieved the American dream through hard work and perseverance. He has earned the right to live in the sacred haven of the United States through a legal, respectable education and a spiffy office job. The woman also flinches at the thought of outsiders receiving the same rights as them. In the white American’s eyes, rights are earned through social status. Solely white Americans born within the border of the United States, who went to a prestigious university and got a high-paying job, deserve rights.
If citizens are considered “the common people," the common people need rights, yet immigrants who are not citizens are deemed undeserving of those rights. Such virulent anit-immigration sentiment seeks to curtail the rights of many individuals who are politically disnefrecnhed and denied basic rights embodied in our constitution. Basic rights such as healthcare are not creating a dent in the larger social issue of capitalism and borders, which require a complete social upheaval to be fixed. This “radical” notion, –– “Who are these people, giving out healthcare like candy?” –– reveals the underlying principle that anti-immigrant voices are transfiguring their anger against those who contribute to the quality of American lives. To find an affordable way to apply the provision of hospital care and public health interventions to vulnerable populations, the “radical” notion requires compassion, ingenuity, and cooperation.
Immigration is a social hierarchy. Not every immigrant receives the vitriolic hatred directed towards those waiting at the blue-collar bus stop for their citizenships. The Economic Times on June 28, 2020, estimated around 580,000 H-1B visa holders in the US. H-1B carriers make up the “skilled” population of immigrant workers. They typically arrive from countries in Europe as well as South and East Asia, working with science, engineering, and technology employers. Emigrating from their native country provided them with the opportunity to expand their careers. As middle or upper-class, these individuals possess the freedom to not only increase their salary, but also leave the US at their leisure. While the government doesn’t necessarily award them with all rights, they are a focal point of respectability politics regarding immigrants.
White-collar workers are the “good immigrants” who have studied hard to live in America, with clean resumes and no government persecution following them. Their jobs require degrees and pay well; as a result, they do not struggle with affording healthcare. They do not demand immigration rights, as plenty believe in the current immigration process as a reliable way to attain citizenship. Beginning March 20th, 2020, the Donald Trump administration suspended routine visa services accompanied with immigrant and nonimmigrant visa appointments. After months of safely working at home, visa holders were deported from the US as well. Although the event was devastating, middle-class workers returned mostly to countries where they had savings and could afford necessities. Business executives consider them valuable products they lost, and recognize the skill of their work. They do not think they represent the “illiterate illegal immigrant” narrative, hence no disgust is present.
Workers sitting at the bus stop waiting for their rights consist mostly of underrepresented minorities associated with poverty in the white gaze. They include Black, Latinx, and Indigenous people of colour who are handed the lower-ranked jobs in society. On the bench sits a migrant farm worker, a female household worker, and a Black man working a food service job, catching a case of COVID-19. People sit through an intergenerational crisis of poverty, trapped in cycles of inaccessible education and no entry to professional jobs. All three have bags under the eyes, tired of begging the wealthy for mercy. The wealthy citizens don’t recognize the people –– those at the bottom of the social ladder tell us a fundamental truth about the socioeconomic and social inequalities within society. To them, immigrants are just like ants running over their territory. If you squash and ignore them, they’ll go away. Albeit the poor provide luxuries for the rich, they remain thankless.
During the past year in the unravelling of the pandemic, people were told to be grateful to essential workers. Medical care, grocery store, food service, and farming workers are all included under this label. Despite a disease threatening their health, essential workers would put their blood, sweat, and tears into working to afford day-to-day necessities. Reported by the pro-immigration lobbying group Fwd.us in March 2021, undocumented immigrants from Latin American countries make up around 50% of farm labour, picking crops such as lettuce for people to eat daily in excruciating conditions in California. Families work days off, at risk of deportation, for a meager wage.
Essential workers do not receive the luxury to take time off work to relax under quarantine. They put their lives at risk for others, and they are forced by the threat of poverty to do so. BIPOC, comprising a significant percentage of low-wage jobs, were thus 3 times more likely to get infected with COVID-19, as recorded by the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease and Research Policy in August 2020. They cough and wheeze, unable to afford healthcare plans, placed under more health restrictions in the duration of the Trump administration. A coughing Black food service worker is of no concern to a wealthy businessman. Black lives matter but to rich Americans, they don’t.
Immigrants and the poor in America comprise a part of the economy in 2021. Whether officially recorded or not, they are the reason people have food on their plate, clothes to buy, household items to collect, etc. They operate with little resources – as in the cartoon, they have their necessities in bags and purses. They’re ready to move around whenever required through immigration bus stops. Everyday, their life is at danger of deportation to concentration camps and death from disease. When immigrants speak up and demand their rights, the government should listen. Customers shouldn’t forget the waiters serving them food or janitors cleaning up the apartment. Remember, fresh fruits and vegetables are picked by migrant workers working towards basic rights. Who are these people? They’re the reason middle-class people get by.
Written by: Eshal Zahur
Edited by: Arsh Ali
Designed by: Alyson Jiang
Works Cited
“Immigrant Farmworkers and America’s Food Production - 5 Things to Know.” FWD.Us, 18 Mar. 2021, https://www.fwd.us/news/immigrant-farmworkers-and-americas-food-production-5-things-to-know/.
McNicholas, Celine, and Margaret Poydock. “Who Are Essential Workers?: A Comprehensive Look at Their Wages, Demographics, and Unionization Rates.” Economic Policy Institute, 19 May 2020, https://www.epi.org/blog/who-are-essential-workers-a-comprehensive-look-at-their-wages-demographics-and-unionization-rates/.
Sangani, Priyanka. “US Has Just over 580,000 H-1B Visa Holders, Says USCIS.” Economic Times, 28 June 2020, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/visa-and-immigration/us-has-just-over-580000-h-1b-visa-holders-says-uscis/articleshow/76676250.cms.
Soucheray, Stephanie. “US Blacks 3 Times More Likely than Whites to Get COVID-19.” CIDRAP, 14 Aug. 2020, https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/08/us-blacks-3-times-more-likely-whites-get-covid-19.
“What Is the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Immigrants and Their Children?” OECD, 19 Oct. 2020, https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/what-is-the-impact-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-on-immigrants-and-their-children-e7cbb7de/.
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