Protecting Undocumented Workers on the Pandemic’s Front Lines

Across the United States, Americans continue to face the harsh reality of life amid a global pandemic and the ensuing economic fallout. More than 7 million people have lost their jobs since February 2020.¹ Americans are worrying about whether and when their children can safely return to school; they have watched their favorite restaurants close, first temporarily and then permanently; and they have been forced to spend holidays without their families and loved ones. And with cases continuing to rise, this public health crisis is far from over.

Among those Americans bearing the brunt of the pandemic and its economic fallout are 10.4 million undocumented immigrants.² At the same time, over the past nine months, millions of these immigrants have worked alongside their neighbors to keep the country functioning and safe. They have worked as doctors and nurses caring for loved ones and fighting this pandemic, but these unique times have also highlighted their crucial work as agricultural workers harvesting Americans’ food; clerks stocking grocery shelves; and delivery drivers bringing food to the safety of people’s homes. After decades of taking these jobs for granted, the country has come to realize just how essential these individuals and their contributions are.

The Biden administration and Congress must take decisive action to control the coronavirus pandemic and provide a path for the country to recover economically from the pandemic-induced recession. This will not be an easy task, and any approach must give special consideration to the communities hit hardest by the coronavirus crisis, including undocumented immigrants. Lack of access to health care, ineligibility for many government relief payments, and job instability leave undocumented immigrants especially vulnerable amid the pandemic.³ Providing a path to legal status for undocumented Americans is a key tool that the next administration and Congress should utilize as they work to fight the coronavirus and rebuild the country and its economy.

For years, all Americans have relied on the outsize impacts that undocumented immigrants’ contributions bring to the economy. But the reality is that the U.S. immigration system has not seen meaningful reform for 30 years. For undocumented immigrants—who on average have lived in the country for 15 years—and their 10.2 million family members, the future is tenuous.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Undocumented immigrants and their families are a part of the social fabric of the country. Recognizing that value first and foremost, this report looks at the role of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. workforce, their fiscal and economic contributions to the country, and how an estimated 5 million undocumented immigrants—nearly 3 in 4 undocumented immigrants in the workforce—are keeping the country moving forward as essential workers in the face of the pandemic. A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is not only the right way to honor these members of the American family, but it would ensure these contributions are not lost for all in the United States. It would also grow those contributions and help to ensure that the nation’s recovery is as bold, dynamic, and equitable as it must be to meet the challenge that the country collectively faces.

Undocumented immigrants make up approximately 3.2 percent of the U.S. population, but 4.4 percent of the country’s workforce. There are more than 7 million undocumented immigrants working in the United States.

The same is generally true when looking at the states. In every state, undocumented immigrants make up a larger share of the workforce than they do the total population. California and Texas are home to the largest undocumented workforce, with 1.4 million and 1.2 million undocumented workers, respectively. But every state relies on undocumented workers. In 41 states and Washington, D.C., there are more than 10,000 undocumented workers, and in 16 states that total is greater than 100,000.

It is important to recognize that undocumented workers do not take jobs from U.S.-born workers, a myth that has been consistently debunked through years of economics research.⁴ The reality is that undocumented immigrants fill crucial gaps in the workforce, largely not competing with U.S.-born workers but complimenting them and creating greater economic activity—activity and productivity that can help the country grow out of this pandemic-induced downturn.⁵

Table 1

The next sections of this report discuss the sectors in which undocumented immigrants play a particularly large role and which of those occupations are likely to see the most growth in the future.

Looking at undocumented workers by industry and occupation

When considering the workforce, there are two frames that are used to discuss workers: industry and occupation. Simply put, the industry represents where someone goes to work, and an occupation represents what someone does while they are at work. For example, someone who works at a hospital works in the “health care and social assistance” industry, while someone who works in a school works in the “educational services” industry.⁶ A registered nurse falls under the “healthcare practitioners and technical occupations,” while a teacher is considered among “educational instruction and library occupations.”⁷

This report categorizes industries based on the 2017 North American Industry Classification System and occupations based on the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification system.⁸

First, consider the data at the broad industry level—groups of workers in different settings who fit into similar categories. More than 1.4 million undocumented immigrants work in construction, accounting for 13 percent of all construction workers. Nearly 1 million immigrants work in accommodation and food services, approximately 8.4 percent of all workers in the industry. Meanwhile, 710,000 undocumented workers make up 10 percent of the administrative and support and waste management industries, and another 489,000 undocumented workers in nonpublic administration services are also overrepresented in the field. (see Methodological Appendix)

When it comes to broad occupational categories, again aggregating many different roles into generalized groupings, undocumented immigrants are overrepresented in six categories, aligned closely with the industries mentioned previously. Approximately 25 percent of workers in farming, fishing, and forestry occupations are undocumented, as are 16 percent of workers in construction and extraction occupations; 15 percent of workers in building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations; 8.7 percent of workers in food preparation and serving-related occupations; 7.7 percent of workers in production occupations; and 5.6 percent of workers in transportation and material moving occupations. (see Appendix Table 2)

Occupational data can be especially rich at more detailed levels. Table 2 shows the 15 largest occupations for undocumented immigrants, 14 of which have more than 100,000 workers.

Nearly 1 in 5 landscaping workers, maids or housekeepers, and construction laborers are undocumented immigrants. Nearly 30 percent of agricultural workers or painters are undocumented.

Table 2

Looking toward the future

Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes lists of the 20 fastest-growing occupations and the 20 occupations projected to have the most job growth over the next decade, several of which have sizeable undocumented populations.¹¹ Although published amid the pandemic in September 2020, these projections recognize that the U.S. economy will at some point recover and the basic demographic changes facing the country are inevitable. As Baby Boomers across the United States continue to age, the country will need more care workers to meet the needs of the aging population The BLS projects that the United States will add 1.2 million new home health and personal care aides between now and 2029. It also projects large additions of fast food workers (461,000), restaurant cooks (327,000), freight and stock laborers (126,000), landscaping and groundskeeping workers (120,000), and janitors (106,000)—all occupations with already large numbers of undocumented workers.

Fiscal and economic contributions of undocumented workers

Beyond their presence in the workforce, undocumented workers make major contributions to the U.S. economy through the taxes they pay and their spending. Center for American Progress analysis finds that each year, undocumented workers and their households pay $79.7 billion in federal tax contributions and $41 billion in state and local tax contributions. These tax dollars fund public schools, infrastructure repairs for roads and bridges, and the military. Immigrants are not just economic producers, but consumers as well.¹² These households hold $314.9 billion in spending power, and every grocery or small-business purchase made is money that is infused into local economies. Undocumented immigrants own 1.6 million homes, paying $20.6 billion in mortgage payments each year, while other undocumented workers pay $49.1 billion in rental payments annually.

On top of their federal tax contributions, undocumented workers also buoy the social safety net; their employers annually contribute payroll taxes totaling $17 billion for Social Security and $4 billion for Medicare, for which undocumented immigrants are ineligible. For state-level data, please see Appendix Table 3.

In March 2020, as the United States first recognized the coronavirus spread and state and local governments began to issue stay-at-home orders, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published guidance on essential critical infrastructure workers, introducing a list of workers in roles that were deemed vital for continuity of public health and safety.¹⁴ This first iteration of critical infrastructure focused on those workers who would still need to access their workplaces despite locally enacted shelter-at-home orders.

These workers have put their safety on the line to help other Americans. In overcapacity intensive care units, doctors, nurses, and aides have treated COVID-19 patients as the understanding of how the coronavirus spreads and how to treat it has evolved. Farmworkers have picked crops; despite outbreaks, workers in meat processing plants have continued their work; and truckers have hauled food across a network of highways to ensure there would never be a food shortage.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 42 states adopted official essential worker orders, with 20 using the CISA framework and 22 shaping their own guidelines.¹⁵ States that created their own critical infrastructure lists tended to add sectors that CISA did not originally include. For example, more than half of states included child care providers in their critical infrastructure lists, while other states adopted broader consideration for new construction as opposed to solely repair and maintenance of critical facilities.¹⁶

As of November 2020, CISA had expanded this guidance three times. Now in its fourth iteration, released in August 2020, the guidance on the critical infrastructure workforce has been broadened.¹⁷ CAP estimates that 5 million undocumented workers—nearly 3 in 4 undocumented immigrants in the workforce—were employed in these sectors at the beginning of the pandemic. Alongside their colleagues, these undocumented essential workers keep critical operations such as energy and telecommunications running, hospitals staffed, and grocery shelves stocked.

Indeed, undocumented immigrants employed in critical infrastructure work in a wide range of jobs. An estimated 1.7 million work in the nation’s food supply chain—from 358,000 farmworkers and food processors to 154,000 working in supermarkets, grocery stores, and convenience stores.

Nearly one-quarter of a million—236,000—undocumented immigrants are working in a health care provision role, from 15,000 registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, to 19,000 lab and diagnostic technicians, to 139,000 home health aides, nursing assistants, and personal care aides. But beyond that, another 188,000 undocumented immigrants are working as custodians, food servers, and administrative workers to keep hospitals, nursing homes, and labs functioning.

Figure 1

The latest CISA guidance attempts to balance the end of stay-at-home orders, a continuing health crisis, and a desire to take steps to jump-start economic growth, resulting in an additional 1.7 million undocumented immigrants being considered essential to maintain the nation’s critical infrastructure since the guidance’s inception. For example, household appliance and electronics stores, along with other stores providing household goods, were added to the list, while the construction and child care definitions were widely expanded.

The workers in this expanded guidance can help transition the United States from treading water to growth. Many working parents—especially women—can only return to their jobs if they can safely send their children back to care facilities.¹⁸ Opening construction widely can create jobs and bring investment that translates to economic growth.¹⁹

The most important thing the next administration and Congress can do is to get the spread of the coronavirus under control and create a path for the country to recover economically from the pandemic. Legalizing undocumented immigrants in the labor force is a tool to make this happen. And recognizing that undocumented immigrants have built lives in the United States, such an effort should extend to those immigrants’ undocumented spouses and minor children to preserve family unity. In the case of undocumented workers on the front lines of the pandemic, that would be 1.3 million spouses and minor children.

Regardless of their status, over the years, immigrants have shaped the course of the economy—both in recoveries from economic downturns and by supporting a positive trajectory through population growth.

Immigrants are job creators, starting businesses at a higher rate than the U.S.-born population, and they revitalize neighborhoods with local-serving businesses.²⁰ They are consumers, they seek out and create opportunities, and they increase housing values.²¹ All of these contributions remain crucial as federal and state governments face massive budget shortfalls brought about by the pandemic.²²

In part because of the demographic changes the United States faces—most importantly, the aging and retirement of the Baby Boomer generation—immigrants and their families will bolster the country’s future.²³ Researchers estimate that without population growth from immigrants and their children, the working-age population in the United States would contract by 4 percent—7 million workers—between 2015 and 2035, contributing to an economic decline.²⁴ But with new Americans, along with Americans whose parents were born abroad, the working-age population will grow by 10 million.²⁵

This trend is borne out throughout the country. In major metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia, a growth in the foreign-born population counterbalanced the shrinking U.S.-born population in the urban core and suburbs.²⁶ This is also the case among rural communities, where population declines were largely—though not entirely—offset by new Americans.²⁷

Recognizing the essential role that undocumented immigrants have played in keeping the country running during the pandemic—as well as the important role that they will continue to play in keeping up the fight and helping the country rebuild—the U.S. House of Representatives twice passed legislation earlier this year to protect these workers. The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which passed in May, and a slimmed-down version passed in October, both include provisions that would provide temporary protection from deportation and work authorization to undocumented immigrants working in the critical infrastructure roles detailed above.²⁸ Both bills also separately extend protections for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

These attempts to provide temporary legal protection are only the latest pieces of legislation offering legal status to a large population of undocumented immigrants to have passed one chamber of Congress in the past 15 years. The U.S. Senate passed large-scale legalization programs included in bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bills in 2006 and 2013. In the past two years, the House passed two additional pieces of legislation on a bipartisan basis that would provide permanent legal status to smaller groups of undocumented immigrants.

In June 2019, the House passed H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act.²⁹ The bill would extend a pathway to citizenship for up to 2.5 million undocumented immigrants, including those who arrived in the United States as children, many of whom were protected under DACA, along with immigrants eligible for TPS; the Trump administration has spent four years trying to terminate both programs.³⁰

Later that year, the House passed H.R. 5038, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which, among other reforms to agriculturally related immigration, would introduce a pathway to permanent residency for longtime undocumented agricultural workers.³¹ While the House sent both of these bills to the Senate, neither bill has been brought to a vote.

Legalization, followed by a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, will have long-reaching benefits for the U.S. economy. Such reforms would increase earnings and productivity for undocumented workers, eventually leading to increased tax contributions and local spending, along with increasing job creation, wages for U.S.-born workers, and gross domestic product (GDP). ³²

While Congress should include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in future legislation, the incoming administration itself also could exercise its authority under Section 212(d)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to parole in place on a case-by-case basis individuals who would provide a significant public benefit to the country—for example, by continuing to work in jobs recognized by CISA as essential to the critical infrastructure of the country—or otherwise grant such individuals deferred action.³³

These actions would benefit the economy as well. Take, for example, the Obama administration’s efforts to implement the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) initiative and to expand DACA. The White House Council on Economic Advisers estimated that granting protection from deportation and work authorization to the 5 million people eligible for these initiatives would yield increases in productivity and wages not just for those eligible, but also for the U.S.-born workforce over the next decade.³⁴ CAP models projected these actions would boost GDP by $164 billion, increase American incomes by $88 billion, and result in the creation of more than 20,000 jobs each year for the next decade.³⁵

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush exercised another example of executive action to protect undocumented immigrants in the United States. The Family Fairness program, in place from 1987 to 1990, extended protection from deportation to undocumented spouses and children of immigrants eligible for legalization under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.³⁶ The program remained in place until Congress passed legislation offering protections to the estimated 1.5 million undocumented individuals—approximately 40 percent of the undocumented population—who qualified for Family Fairness relief.³⁷

The vast majority of undocumented immigrants—93 percent—are people of color.³⁸ COVID-19 harshly hits communities of color, especially Black, Latinx, and Native American individuals, who experience disproportionate case and death rates and are less likely to be able to work remotely.³⁹ Creating a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants is not just a necessity for economic recovery—it is an issue of economic and racial justice for communities that have been the most vulnerable to the crisis.

More than eight months into the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has not only largely ignored undocumented immigrants, but also locked their U.S. citizen spouses and children out of direct cash payments.⁴⁰ These payments were a lifeline to financial stability for many through the spring and summer, but they excluded 5.5 million U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents who are spouses to or children of undocumented immigrants.⁴¹ Many undocumented individuals remain largely unable to access necessary health care.⁴² They are more likely to face wage theft and discrimination on the job, and without federally recognized identification documents, they have difficulty accessing financial institutions, exacerbating the racial wealth gap.⁴³ As workers, they are ineligible for Social Security or Medicare but pay millions of dollars into these programs each year.⁴⁴ Future recovery efforts must address status for undocumented immigrants in order to remove the structural barriers these individuals face in the United States.

For Americans across the country—regardless of immigration status—the coronavirus has completely upended day-to-day life. Whether working in person or remotely, facilitating virtual school lessons and caring for loved ones, the country is waiting for the pandemic to end and the economy to be headed toward recovery.

Over the past eight months, undocumented workers have already played an integral role in fighting the pandemic and keeping the country moving, and in the months ahead, the country will count on them to continue this work and contribute to the collective effort to recover and rebuild. As farmworkers, construction laborers, custodial staff, and home health or personal care aides, 7 million undocumented workers lift up major sectors of the workforce—including the 5 million on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic response. Each year, undocumented immigrants and their households contribute billions of dollars in taxes, pay billions in housing payments, and spend billions more in their communities.

As the incoming Biden administration and Congress tackle the coronavirus response and economic recovery, they cannot ignore the many ways undocumented workers keep the country running or what they mean to their families and communities. In designing legislative and administrative programs to deliver relief to all Americans and help the country get back on the path to prosperity, providing legal status to undocumented immigrants must be considered a key tool to ensure the recovery is sufficiently robust and resilient, equitable and inclusive.

Nicole Prchal Svajlenka is the associate director for research on the Immigration Policy team at the Center for American Progress. At CAP, Svajlenka works on a diverse set of immigration issues, ranging from enforcement to relief, all with a particular focus on data and quantitative analysis. Svajlenka has spent a decade working in think tanks, including at the Brookings Institution, where she conducted research on immigration, human capital, and labor markets in metropolitan areas across the United States, and The Pew Charitable Trusts, where she examined the relationships between federal, state, and local immigration policies. A Chicagoland native, Svajlenka holds a Master of Arts in geography from George Washington University and a Bachelor of Arts in environmental geography from Colgate University.

The findings presented in this report are based on CAP analysis of pooled 2018 and 2019 1-year American Community Survey microdata, accessed via the University of Minnesota’s IPUMS USA database.⁴⁵

Household tax contributions and spending power estimates are based on methodology developed by New American Economy and include all households that contain an undocumented household member.⁴⁶ The tax rates applied to the microdata come from the Congressional Budget Office and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.⁴⁷ Spending power is measured as household income after federal, state, and local tax contributions; these data are based on household incomes, which are available in the ACS microdata. 

The analysis calculates mortgage and rental payments for households in which an undocumented immigrant is the head of household or the spouse or unmarried partner of a head of household. Monthly payment information is aggregated from the ACS microdata.

Medicare and Social Security payments are calculated as 6.2 percent and 1.45 percent, respectively. The 7.65 percent tax that undocumented immigrants pay is included in their federal tax payments, but employers also pay an additional 7.65 percent per employee in Social Security and Medicare taxes.⁴⁸

The text box below shows the occupations and industries coded as essential based on CISA’s “Guidance on the Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce: Ensuring Community and National Resilience In COVID-19 Response.”⁴⁹

Appendix Table 1

Appendix Table 2

Appendix Table 3