An Undocumented Worker Describes the Impact of the World Trade Center Attack

Abstract: This undocumented worker was left without work when the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001. The hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who staff low paying jobs in the service industries are often invisible, despite their important contributions to the nation's economy. Largely unprotected by labor laws and ineligible for social security and unemployment insurance, these immigrants struggle to support themselves as well as, in many cases, family and relatives in their countries of origin. Their suffering in the wake of the World Trade Center attack was similarly invisible, although the tragedy hit the undocumented workers who worked in the center particularly hard. Undocumented workers could not gain government-sponsored economic assistance or other forms of relief available to citizens who lost work.

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