The deportation frenzy being conducted by the squatter currently occupying the White House and his sycophants is not only harmful to immigrant communities across the country; it also has a great potential to hurt a lot of Americans with disabilities and the home health care that they rely on.
My pit crew is what I call the crew of people that I have hired to come into my home every day and help me do all of the daily essential tasks, like getting in and out of bed and getting dressed. I can’t do these things without assistance because of my physical disability; I use a motorized wheelchair all day every day. So having a solid pit crew is very important to me—they make everything else possible. The hourly wages of my pit crew members are paid by a state program that is largely funded by Medicaid.
Immigrants play a large role in home health care. KFF, a nonprofit focused on health policy, reports that immigrants make up 32 percent of the workers in home care settings. I’m not surprised to hear that. Because of the devaluation of the lives of disabled folks, helping us live our lives is often seen as the type of dirty work that is to be done by people who are also devalued, such as immigrants.
As KFF states, the immigration crackdown and deportation frenzy could “lead to reductions in immigrants available to fill these roles, which would exacerbate workforce shortages, making it harder for people to find caregivers for themselves and their loved ones.”
People who support what the squatter is doing are likely to say that only people who need to worry about being rounded up and deported are undocumented immigrants—but we all know that’s not true. There have been too many reports to the contrary. It’s clear that the squatter’s main motivation for putting on this vindictive spectacle is to intimidate immigrants of color.
Last month, The Chicago Sun-Times reported the story of my fellow Chicagoan and wheelchair user, Michelle Garcia, who also relies heavily on the assistance of the people she hires to come into her home. Garcia says she often turns to an informal network to find home care workers. But ever since the squatter moved back into the White House earlier this year, she’s had trouble finding care. Recently, she says, one worker was too scared to come in because she said there were U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the prowl nearby. Garcia says she has had so much trouble finding workers that she has slept in her wheelchair and gone weeks without a shower.
I’m not too surprised by this. Healthy human societies are all about interdependence. And when you mess with one group of people it can’t help but have a negative ripple effect on others.
Therefore, I would like to add a stanza to German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous post-war “First They Came For” quote: “Then they came for the pit crew members, and I did not speak out—because I was not a pit crew member.”