Two scathing investigations just revealed that when one of Florida’s 600,000 illegal immigrants gets hurt on the job, his employer generally turns him over to the authorities for deportation. Employers dispose of injured illegal laborers to avoid paying workman’s compensation.
No worker deserves to be treated this way.
It’s time to fix a broken immigration system that allows corporations to exploit illegal immigrants for their cheap labor while suppressing the wages of citizens and legal residents. Major reforms are needed to protect workers of all backgrounds from such corporate greed.
Companies across the Sunshine State have recruited illegal immigrants -- and then dumped them once they became a liability. A new investigation from the Naples Daily News found more than 160 instances since 2004 in which illegal immigrants were charged by law enforcement after sustaining an injury. In almost all of those cases, the worker was turned in by his or her employer or the employer’s insurance company.