National media reports have highlighted for the American public the realities of ongoing child labor exploitation in the country. While it’s important to understand the situation of children facing exploitation, policies to address it must interrogate its root causes.
For the past 20 years, the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights has been supporting unaccompanied immigrant children in federal custody, serving as independent Child Advocates. Child Advocates get to know children, their hopes and dreams for their lives and the traumas they’ve faced. Many young people we work with are desperate to be released from custody and be among friends, family, and community. In many cases, they are also eager to find work to support themselves and their families. Once released, young people do not have work authorization documents and are ineligible for most public benefits, such as health care, transportation, food or housing assistance. The lack of support for these young people and their families makes them vulnerable to employers looking for cheap labor.
To end America’s child labor problem, we must examine its roots and the policies that allow it to thrive today. Migrant child labor is simultaneously a poverty problem, a labor problem, an immigration problem and a racial justice problem. Its solutions must be as intersectional as its causes.
During this Immigrant Heritage Month, join us for a webinar on June 24 at 1 PM ET to hear from Dr. Ivón Padilla-Rodríguez, a socio-legal historian of child migration at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has recently completed a report with the Young Center on migrant child labor. She will be joined by Raia Stoicheva, managing attorney and Child Advocate supervisor from the Young Center and Mina Dixon Davis, policy analyst for the Young Center, will moderate a discussion on the drivers of migrant child labor exploitation and possible solutions to reduce or eliminate it.
