When the workplace rights of immigrant workers are protected, all workers are protected
Healthcare. Caregiving. Farmwork. Construction. Hospitality. None of these industries could survive without the skills, labor and dedication of immigrant workers. Their contributions should be honored and remembered this Labor Day – and everyday.
HEALTHCARE: Immigrants help keep Americans – and the healthcare industry overall – healthy and alive. In clinical occupations, immigrants represent more than a quarter of all physicians, KFF said. In rural areas, 22.4% of healthcare workers are foreign-trained. “Sixteen percent of registered nurses (RNs) are immigrants, which is the same as the share of all hospital workers that are immigrants.” These healthcare professionals include the nearly 300,000 Black immigrants who work as physicians, registered nurses, and home health aides. Among Haitian immigrants alone, more than 100,000 work as healthcare workers.
Foreign-born workers also make up “a relatively high share of building cleaning and maintenance workers at US hospitals,” and they deserve their own praise for helping keep facilities safe for patients and clinicians. “This includes 17% of building cleaning and maintenance workers who are naturalized citizens and another 12% who are noncitizen immigrants,” KFF continued.
CAREGIVING: The immigrants who care for our elderly and disabled loved ones, children, and others requiring regular assistance “are the quiet force holding our care system together,” as the National Women’s Law Center said. “In 2019, 36.5% of all home health aides in the United States were immigrants, a rate that was twice their share of the U.S. workforce overall (17.1%),” the American Immigration Council said in 2023. “This includes undocumented workers, who made up an estimated 6.9% of home health aides and 4.4% of personal care aides.”
CONSTRUCTION: “Immigrants make up nearly 30% of the national construction workforce. In states like California and Texas, immigrant workers account for 40% or more of construction labor,” the American Business Immigration Coalition (ABIC) said. “The U.S. construction industry employs nearly 1.6 million undocumented immigrants,” and many are highly concentrated in specific trades including plastering and drywall installation (61%), roofing (52%) and painting (51%), the report said.
“America cannot build without builders,” ABIC continued. “The immigrant workforce is already on the job—what’s missing is the policy to keep them there.”
FARMWORK: Each and every one of us – no matter our political affiliations or views on immigration – eat the food on our table largely thanks to our immigrant neighbors. “The agricultural sector in the United States relies on foreign workers; 86 percent of agricultural workers in the United States are foreign-born and 45 percent of all US agricultural workers are undocumented,” according to the Center for Migration Studies. “Immigrant labor accounts for 51 percent of all dairy labor, and dairies that employ immigrant labor produce 79 percent of the U.S. milk supply,” said the National Milk Producers Federation. “If the U.S. dairy industry lost its foreign-born workforce, it would nearly double retail milk prices and cost the total U.S. economy more than $32 billion.”
HOSPITALITY: “Immigrant workers are not just helping; they are essential to keeping this industry running,” ABIC said, noting that one in three hotel and lodging workers is an immigrant. Immigrants are also leaders in this industry, owning 43% of motels and small hotels, 37% of restaurants, and one in three new hospitality businesses, the organization continued. “Over one million undocumented individuals currently work in hospitality, particularly in hotels and restaurants,” ABIC said. “They reduce turnover, meet staffing demands, and help keep businesses open. Without them, the labor shortage could double, placing the entire industry at greater risk.”
MASS DEPORTATION HURTS EVERYBODY
The fact is that all of these industries are being impacted under anti-immigrant policies that have already led to the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of our undocumented neighbors. The Trump administration is determined to sweep up millions more with their chaotic, deadly and devastating deportation machine.
In Texas, nursing assistant Yenniffer England was abducted by ICE despite holding valid DACA status. In New York, a Westchester nursing home had to lay off seven Haitian workers after the Trump administration unjustly stripped them of their legal status. In Florida, some Orlando restaurants have lost an estimated 40% of revenue following an exodus of immigrant staff members. Back in Texas, construction jobs in the Rio Grande Valley fell 5% in the third quarter of 2025, the region’s largest quarterly drop on record. “Business is down significantly,” said the South Texas Builders Association’s Ronnie Cavazos. “If we continue on this trajectory, we will see a lot of businesses fail.” And nationally, the administration itself has admitted that mass deportation is hurting our food supply.
IMMIGRANT RIGHTS ARE WORKER RIGHTS
Americans work hard. Immigrants do, too. This Labor Day is an opportunity to express solidarity with immigrant workers and reaffirm that immigration is good for our economy, essential to a multitude of essential industries and necessary to our continued success. Just as importantly, it’s an opportunity to express that immigrant rights are workers rights. When the workplace rights of immigrant workers are protected, all workers are protected.
