Catalina’s mother has raised her children alone and dedicated part of her life to childcare, a sector facing a deep staffing crisis—one that has worsened in recent months, as experts say immigrants are essential to sustaining it.
“The childcare sector broadly has long been facing a crisis and a shortage of workers. And immigrant workers are critical to keeping that system running. Both the formal sector and the informal sector,” Wendy Cervantes, director of Immigration and Immigrant Families at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), tells CNN.
According to a report from the National Women’s Law Center, 20% of early educators in the US – an umbrella term encompassing preschool teachers, home-based childcare providers, teachers aids and program directors – are immigrants. Women make up “a significant percentage” of the workforce in this sector nationwide.
“Care work is the work that makes all other work possible and enables all families to thrive,” the report says. However, caregivers face low wages, lack of benefits, vulnerability to exploitation, and job insecurity. Undocumented workers, for their part, also lack basic labor rights and protections. Although she has lived in the US for years, Catalina’s mother does not have access to work benefits like health insurance or social security.
“She gets paid in cash or by check, but no benefits. Nothing,” Catalina says of her mother’s working conditions.
Every year, undocumented immigrants living in the US pay billions of dollars in taxes even though they know they won’t be able to enjoy the benefits unless their status is regularized.
Additionally, the constant threat of being reported limits her even when accepting jobs. “If a job comes from an American family, I don’t think she’d take it. She’s afraid that if something happens, someone will call the authorities.”
According to Cervantes, immigrant childcare workers “are often an invisible workforce.” Despite their crucial role in the early education of an increasingly diverse child population, they are not sufficiently recognized.
“One thing that often goes unrecognized is that these workers are among the few who are bilingual and culturally competent, particularly in the formal sector, which is highly sought after. Many families want their children in bilingual education programs, and these workers are essential for serving an increasingly diverse child population,” adds the CLASP director. Beyond the numbers, the tightening of immigration policies under Trump’s administration has directly impacted the reality of thousands of families like Catalina’s.
A few weeks after Trump took office, his administration announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents could now make arrests near places like schools, churches, and hospitals, ending a longstanding policy that prevented them from operating in so-called “sensitive locations.”
“And now, in some states where there is greater cooperation with local police, a nanny simply driving to work could be arrested, deported, and separated from her family,” Cervantes notes.
Catalina’s mother experiences that anxiety firsthand every day when she gets in the car to pick up the children she cares for in the afternoons. “When she arrives, there are always police officers managing traffic. Sometimes she hides in the car, doesn’t get out. She waits for the kids to get in the car. It’s awful,” Catalina says. “If I meet her at the school, she feels a little better. But if she’s alone, she doesn’t.”
Source: Here