When you compare two analyses, one from FiveThirtyEight and other from Pew Research, something interesting emerges. FiveThirtyEight lists the industries hardest hit by the lockdowns and when you combine that with Pew’s list of employment of illegal migrant workers by industry you get this:
| Industry | % Change Feb-Apr | % Illegal |
| Leisure and hospitality | -48.3 | 18 |
| Other services | -22.0 | 3 |
| Construction | -13.2 | 16 |
| Trade, transportation and utilities | -11.2 | 12 |
| Education and health services | -10.8 | 12 |
| Manufacturing | -10.6 | 13 |
| Professional and business services | -10.4 | 22 |
Mexicans and Central Americans could return to their countries of origin and I suspect that many will, not the least because they do not qualify for social services here. Other nationals may face a real problem. There’s no work; they can’t leave; and they can’t stay.
I would add that even foreign workers here legally may face a problem. If they’re laid off long enough they will lose their legal status.
Would be interesting to see if those areas are preferentially keeping or laying off illegals.
Steve
I’m sheltering two stranded Argentine women in my vacation home in a Colorado Ski resort now that they’ve been laid off from their legal H-2B visa jobs. Argentina has said that they won’t open to commercial flights until Sep 1, though they might still run some repatriation flights to bring back their nationals.
In preparation for the next pandemic, US and other governments should institute a Craigslist-type of marketplace for closed hotels, AirBnB’s and vacation-homeowners to link up with stranded tourists, foreign and domestic, and even the homeless.
It’s such an unbearable shame that this country has empty dwellings while there are folks who have nowhere to live, and is euthanizing pigs and dumping out milk while there is such starvation in Bangladesh and elsewhere.
I was stranded in Rio after 9/11 and the Brazilian government answered the plea of our government to help out stranded Americans, whereupon they extended our expired visa and put us up in a 5-star hotel on the beach of Copacabana.
Keep up the good work!
We have a dear friend whose student visa was days from expiring, and who was visiting us on the way back to her home country, when the travel bans hit.
We are enjoying the indefinitely extended nature of her visit, and we are grateful for her safety and good fortune in being stranded here rather than in some foreign airport with no help, but there are going to be a lot of legal issues to sort through when the dust finally begins settling.