Creative Commons
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends booster shots for “high-risk workers,” it should not forget the undocumented immigrant workers whose safety was ignored as they were forced to work through last spring’s quarantine.
Though all workers with any face-to-face contact would benefit from a booster, there is strong evidence that Latinx immigrant workers — among which many are undocumented — are at particular risk.
The CDC’s announcement, issued on Oct. 21, suggested booster shots for anyone who is immunocompromised, 65 or older or whose work requires “frequent institutional or occupational exposure” to COVID-19. This last group includes health care workers, teachers, day care workers, grocery workers and those in homeless shelters or prisons.
These “high-risk” workers undoubtedly need booster shots. But if the COVID-19 pandemic taught us anything, it’s that the risk of exposure has as much to do with lack of economic security as it does with one’s workplace.
As a researcher at the University of Colorado, Denver, I’ve been conducting interviews with undocumented Latinx workers in Colorado since the start of the pandemic. I constantly hear stories of unsafe conditions from these vulnerable workers each week.
Leticia, an undocumented housekeeper for a private homeowner in Aspen, fell sick because her employer asked her to drive three hours away to retrieve a friend from the airport. The man, who later tested positive for COVID-19, jumped in her car without a mask.
Erica, an undocumented hotel worker, caught the coronavirus because her son — a DACA recipient — contracted the illness at his job in a grocery store last March. She later watched as a COVID-19 outbreak sickened four of the nine women on her housekeeping staff.
Like many frontline workers, Leticia and Erica were desperate to receive a vaccine. But because they work in jobs believed to carry less risk of exposure than agriculture or supermarkets, they had to wait in line. In Colorado, hotel workers were vaccinated after farmworkers, grocery store workers and individuals over 60.
Now, neither Erica nor Leticia fall within the occupational categories prioritized for booster shots. And because they are undocumented, they have no alternative but to face the constant risk of exposure. Ineligible for unemployment and excluded from the three economic stimulus payments the federal government has provided, they can’t refuse an employer’s request nor leave their jobs.
Though all workers with any face-to-face contact would benefit from a booster, there is strong evidence that Latinx immigrant workers — among which many are undocumented — are at particular risk. Latinx immigrant workers, for example, face a death rate from COVID-19 that is nearly 12 times higher than non-Latinx, non-immigrant workers.
This high rate of death among Latinx workers is partly due to frequent face-to-face contact in their workplaces. Sixty-nine percent percent of all immigrant workers — and 74% of undocumented workers — work in industries deemed “essential critical infrastructures,” including agriculture, health care and food processing.
Workers in frontline essential industries should be rewarded, and their risks acknowledged through preferential access to boosters, as the CDC and FDA appear to be doing. But there are many undocumented workers, such as Leticia and Erica, whose jobs don’t appear on the CDC’s list of “high-risk jobs.” Yet their lack of economic alternatives forces them to endure risky situations every day.
These low-wage workers were not prioritized during the first vaccine roll-out, nor were they included in the third stimulus. It’s time to prioritize them now.
This column was produced for The Progressive magazine and distributed by Tribune News Service.