Migrant women, especially women of color, are pictured as a drain on public resources. In fact they do the nannying, cleaning, janitorial, nursing-aide and home-care work that the economy and society depend on. The jobs treated as least desirable turn out to be among the most crucial.
Calling migrant women illegal, un-American and disposable is not a side effect of their low pay. It is part of what holds them in it. The economy has a steady hunger for a waiting pool of cheap labor, and workers marked as outsiders with few rights fill that pool.
Immigration rules and welfare policy don't just respond to where women end up working; they push immigrant and poor women into traditionally female roles like childcare, cleaning and care work. Programs such as special visas for nannies work like old guest-worker schemes. They admit women for their labor while withholding full membership.
International lenders and the U.S. government have worked together for a long time in ways that push women out of poorer countries. The same forces then supply those women as low-wage care and household workers in rich ones. Domestic work in one country is tied to economic policy imposed on another.
The women in these low-paid, insecure jobs are not only victims of policy. They actively resist the exploitation they face and keep organizing for workers over many years.