Rousmaniere: Immigration and the Bob/Scarlett Test

The Trump administration’s crack down on immigration has arrived as swiftly as promised. On its fourth business day, the administration issued executive orders on building that wall along the Mexican border, immigrant entry, and handling of persons who are deportation prospects. 

Immigration has been a favorite topic of mine after I discovered how many foreign-born workers are injured at work. Immigrants form a demographic hourglass. Some keep our lawns in perfect shape. Others win Nobel prizes. All the American awardees in 2016 were foreign born. 

About half of hired farm workers and half of hotel maids are foreign born, and half of them are unauthorized. Immigrants account for 13 percent of our entire population, but a third of all workers hold low-paid, often injury-prone jobs hidden from the public like food prep and material packaging. But only 15 percent of low-paid jobs are those that engage with the public, such as retail sales. 

I estimate that a typical immigrant with little formal education has a career path that is fraught with twice the risk of work injury as the career path of a poorly educated native-born American.

The workers’ compensation system does the right thing with injured immigrants. It does not squeal to law enforcement when it suspects the claimant is unauthorized (though there are lapses). Except for Wyoming and Idaho, the laws generally allow for benefits to unauthorized claimants. The claims and loss control staffs, at the operational level, try to hire bilingual workers and engage translators. 

But I’ve found that the executive level in workers’ comp companies and corporate risk management pay inconsistent attention to the demands imposed by workers or claimants; who may have limited English proficiency and little tacit awareness of American safety, healthcare and employment practices.

I wandered through the exhibit hall of the annual Risk and Insurance Management Society’s 2013 meeting in Los Angeles, asking several dozen individuals what their company was doing about the health and safety issues of immigrant workers. Most gave me a blank stare. A quarter reacted as if I’d asked them to touch the subway’s third rail because I inferred that the topic was too close to hiring illegals. About one tenth leaped into a detailed narrative of their trials and errors of their ultimately successful efforts to manage these workers. My unscientific poll told me that a lot of the C suites need an attitude adjustment intervention.

The single most impactful change in immigration policy on workers’ comp is one that appears impossible to make. Either greatly deport our unauthorized workforce of eight million, and/or to give it legal status. If you look closely at where these workers fit into the economy, it is hard to imagine an outcome that does not end in legalization. That does not necessarily, and probably should not, mean citizenship. That outcome would dispel fear and uncertainty among the workers. It would probably lead to more claims but also would tamper down abusive employer practices.

I’ve studied immigration policies and facts from the opening up of our borders by Congress in 1965, as the foreign-born share of our population rose from about ten to 43 million.

I learned to be wary of personal impulses about immigration, as they were likely too generous or too hostile, and almost certainly misinformed. Americans are extremely conflicted, and individually so. Once you ask someone to consider a specific problem, such as whether employers should be ordered to report evidence of unauthorized status, you often get a nuanced response.

No federal agency monitors the impact – past, present or future – of immigrant workers on the job market and the economy. Bill Whitehead, a conservative-leaning friend in the insurance industry, told me that the nation’s immigration policy is like ten-year-old Christmas light strings put away by an 8-year-old. You spend hours trying to untangle this mess. Every cleared twist and knot seems to create other twists and knots.

Most people’s core aspirations and concerns about immigration are not about jobs, fiscal burdens or physical security. What’s most important to them is the impact of immigration on American civic culture – being like us in language, education, and community habits, for instance. How a person feels about cultural cohesion influences how one engages, or avoids, immigration issues at work, say as a claims adjuster.

One quarter of us are now either foreign-born or the offspring of them. The share is getting larger. Who are we? Do the Bob and Scarlett Test to see how un-conflicted you are. (A note of disclosure: I personally favor a permissive rather than restrictive immigration policy.) My colleague Bob Wilson and actor Scarlett Johansson are laid prone on adjacent tables. Cell by cell, Scarlett’s body cells are exchanged with those of Bob’s. These cross transfers get to the point where one quarter of the cells have crossed over. Who is Bob? Who is Scarlett? Is each a better person?

About the Author

Peter Rousmaniere is widely known throughout the workers’ compensation industry, both for his writing and consulting experience. Based in the picture perfect New England town of Woodstock, VT, he is a regular on the conference circuit, and is deeply in tune with trends and developments within the industry. His passion is writing and presenting on issues largely related to immigration, and he maintains a blog on the subject at www.workingimmigrants.com.

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