Immigrant or US-Born, We’re All in the Same Boat

Every morning, my dad laces up his work boots knowing there’s a chance he won’t come home. A skilled carpenter, he has worked in Los Angeles’ construction industry since our family moved to the US when I was 3. Through years of backbreaking labor, his boss praised his skill, reliability, and loyalty. He not only built this city but also a life for our family in LA. Now, that life is in jeopardy—because like so many undocumented workers, when my dad needed protection from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was treated like he didn’t matter.

After 15 years of loyalty, my dad asked for a few days off at the height of the LA ICE raids out of concern for his safety. In response, his boss gave him an ultimatum: Show up to work and risk being taken by ICE or stay home. His employer threatened to replace him with someone “willing to do the job.”

His concern was not unfounded. Since then, ICE has raided my dad’s job site twice as part of the surge in raids across LA and the country. Our family lives in fear of the third time.

Behind these attacks is deliberate policy. The construction industry has become an easy target for the administration’s mass abduction efforts—according to a Stateline analysis this industry employs the most immigrant laborers. And Stephen Miller, a senior White House aide and the architect behind much of ICE’s siege on our cities, explicitly ordered ICE to conduct raids against working families, demanding at least 3,000 people be disappeared a day.

And the administration isn’t stopping there. With the Big Ugly Bill now signed into law, immigration enforcement will receive an unprecedented $170 billion surge to ramp up these mass abductions. This money is being taken directly from our taxpayer wallets and cut from the things we all rely on, like healthcare and education. Whether you migrated here or were born here, we are all being attacked by deadly policies meant to keep us in a cycle of suffering.

While my dad is irreplaceable to my family, it has never been more clear to me that his life, and the lives of all working people, are viewed as disposable in this country. Workers like my dad power this country. But for far too long, politicians have benefited from keeping working people divided, selling the lie that immigrants and US-born workers are on different sides—when in truth, we’ve always been in the same boat.

If you’re a vulnerable worker like my dad and don’t come to work because ICE is there, they’ll replace you. If you’re a US-born worker demanding better pay, they’ll fire you and exploit an undocumented person instead to do the job for even less than they paid you. All workers lose, while massive companies walk away making a buck no matter what.

Now, as we stare down the barrel of a bill that will usher in the largest transfer of wealth to the ultra rich, working families face a choice: Do we come together to build unified labor power or do we let greedy billionaires and politicians divide us?

The path forward is clear. It’s time for workers to band together. We must break the cycle that has long used immigrants like my dad as a cudgel to keep us divided and see that by joining forces, we can unite our demands and grow our power. From demanding no ICE on construction sites to demanding safer working conditions for all employees, it has always been working people who hold the power, not them.