Immigration Enforcement Meets Labor Rights
One In-Person Session / Free
Thur., Oct. 12, 2023, 6:30-8 pm MT

It’s called wage theft and it occurs when workers are denied the full wages and benefits for their work. In the U.S., it may total $50 billion per year, but it gets little attention. In this lecture, migration scholar Rebecca Galemba examines how immigration enforcement impacts labor rights in the U.S., with a focus on wage theft. “Wage theft not only affects individuals, but also translates into economic losses for governments, losses in tax and benefit payments, and punishes law abiding employers,” Galemba says. “As more industries adopt more informal arrangements and move away from secure employment with benefits, the plight of the most vulnerable workers highlights more systemic problems impacting growing segments of workers around the world.” Because U.S. wage and hour laws cover all employees who work in the U.S. regardless of legal status, they provide a useful tool for unauthorized workers. But immigrant workers’ inability to legally work and live in the U.S., coupled with weak labor rights protections, make it difficult for those workers to assert these limited rights. Galemba explores how stricter border enforcement and interior immigration policing doesn’t stop unauthorized immigrants from working, but instead ensures their silent compliance, which imperils wages and safety conditions for all workers. She ends by covering some parallel global examples.

Rebecca Galemba is an associate professor, anthropologist and migration scholar at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies. She co-founded the Center for Immigration Policy and Research, a research center dedicated to migration issues in the Rocky Mountain West. She studies globalization, illicit markets, migration, security and labor in Mexico, Central America and the U.S.

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