Janine Jackson interviewed ProPublica‘s Nicole Foy about immigration and labor for the November 1, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: One of the weirdest and most harmful things so-called mainstream news media do is to take concerns, social problems, experiences, hardships—and reduce them to “electoral issues,” meaningful solely to the extent that candidates talk about them, and defined in terms of what they say—rather than starting with people, and our lives, and judging candidates based on whether their proposed responses are grounded and humane.
Immigration would have to be near the top of the list of phenomena that exists, has existed, worldwide forever, but that corporate news media seem comfortable larding with whatever ignorant hearsay and disinformation politicians of the moment care to spout. Anyone interested in just, human-centered immigration policy has to keep their eyes on the prize through the fog of horserace coverage.
Journalist Nicole Foy reports on immigration and labor at ProPublica, where she’s Ancil Payne Fellow. She joins us now by phone from here in town. Welcome to CounterSpin, Nicole Foy.
Nicole Foy: Thank you so much for having me.
ProPublica (10/22/24)
JJ: I want to talk about your recent piece that gets at a lot of things, but it really is a story of a person. And so, before anything else, please just tell us, if you would, about Elmer De León Pérez, and what happened in January of this year.
NF: Yeah, so Elmer was a young, only 20 years old, Guatemalan immigrant who was living in Houma, Louisiana, which is a little bit southwest of New Orleans, one of the areas that’s quite frequently threatened by hurricanes. He was working at a shipyard in the Houma area. He was a welder, pretty skilled welder. He made a decent amount of money, and was called upon to do some pretty difficult tasks, including helping build a ship for NOAA, which people may know for weather forecasting and hurricane forecasting. This shipyard that he was working at had a number of government contracts for ships.
He was building this ship for NOAA on that morning in January, when, essentially, his coworkers realized that he didn’t show up for lunch that day. And by the time he was found in the tank of the ship where he was welding, he was already unconscious, unresponsive, and, later, first responders did not continue trying to resuscitate him because he was already showing signs of rigor mortis, meaning that he had likely died some time ago.
And in the aftermath of all of that, his family, which, even though he was only 20, he had a young son with another immigrant who also lives in Houma, and he has an extended family, from Louisiana to all the way back in Guatemala, who cared quite a bit about him. They not only struggled to get answers about what happened to him for a long time, but they’ve yet to receive any sort of compensation, or even really acknowledgement, from the company he was working for, and even though he died on the job.
JJ: So this is a person who dies on the job, working for a government contract. So what is it that made you want to report this out? It can’t be because you thought this is an anomalous case.
NF: Yeah. The way this story started is kind of interesting, actually, because my editor and I were initially very interested in finding a story that explained what happens when immigrant workers die on the job. I had been telling him how often you see families raising money, whether through GoFundMe, or asking for help on Facebook, often because they’re trying to get their loved ones’ bodies home to their home country, whether they’ve been here for years and years, and they really would prefer to be buried in their hometown, or because they had only been here for a couple of years, and they’re just trying to get their bodies home.
We were really interested in that concept, because it struck us as something really, I think, indicative of, I don’t know—I think it spoke to a number of things about how immigrant workers exist in the United States. We rely on them so heavily now, and have always, and yet their families are often left in really difficult financial straits just to do what they would consider, I am assuming, is the bare minimum, which is get them home, get them buried in the land that they may have wanted to return to, or that they came from. And we were really struck by that.
So I was looking into a number of different cases. I was poring through GoFundMe and Facebook and through OSHA fatality-on-the-job records and pulling different cases, and there’s so many. You spend a lot of time doing this, and you see just how many immigrants are dying on the job, everywhere from California to Louisiana to Texas. And reading the GoFundMe pleas or the Facebook pleas of their family asking for help, to try to have a funeral, send the body home.
Elmer De León Pérez (right) with his father, Erick De Pérez (family photo)
And we were really interested in his case, because as we were doing reporting, not only was I able to find all of the different, just really moving videos that his family had posted on Facebook, of trying to raise money, and then eventually they filmed his body arriving back home to his hometown in Guatemala. And the way the community really came together in a common way was really moving. And also then we, as I looked into his employer and where he died, realized that this was a company that has a number of government contracts, to build and repair ships for the Navy, for the Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers—you name it, there’s a government agency that needs a ship.
And so that’s kind of how we got started there, is we were interested in what happens to immigrant workers, to their families, when they die on the job, what kind of care is taken for them. And then we discovered this really truly heartbreaking case of someone who was building a ship for our country, and still his family couldn’t get the help that they say they need.
JJ: This is where journalism connects the human story with a data story, with a broader story, a policy story. The story about immigrant workers and the workforce, it’s like the worst kept secret in the country, the idea that farmworkers, and shipbuilders as you’re talking about, that these industries rely on, they couldn’t operate without, immigrant labor. And yet we’re still supposed to accept this weird capitalist story about only Americans can work here, and immigrants are actually stealing jobs. And it’s such a weird disconnect between what a lot of folks know is actually happening, and the storyline that people are being told.
And I think that’s what’s so important about this story: Organizations, companies, rely on immigrant labor, but they rely on them in a particular way. And that has to do with the contratista, the idea of the legal designation that is given to these workers. And that, of course, is important in Pérez’s story.
Nicole Foy:
NF: Yeah, I think, too, what I found really telling, reporting this story, is that it really is such a common story for immigrants who don’t currently have the legal authority to work in the US, the ways that they still have to pursue in order to support their families. And it was really interesting to see that playing out in an industry that you don’t really see as part of the immigration debate, shipbuilding, and particularly shipbuilding for government ships.
This particular shipyard, they don’t have contracts to build nuclear submarines or even battleships or anything, but they’re building support vessels or research ships for NOAA, for so many different branches of the military and for the government, that are pretty essential to our country’s defenses, and also just to keep our country running properly. And that’s not really something that you see in the immigration debate, is that we also need workers desperately for those types of jobs.
I think people still think of welding in a shipyard as a job that should pay so well, and does pay so well, that everybody is competing with each other for them. But the economic facts of our country right now are very different. We don’t have as many blue collar workers as we used to, and we have quite a lot of work that needs to be done. So that’s why you see immigrants in these jobs that, again, I think there’s often this narrative of “they’re taking these jobs from workers,” but the shipbuilding industry in particular is suffering greatly from a really dramatic lack of workers to do the jobs that they need, whether it’s welding or another job in a shipyard.
I just thought that was another good example of his life and the work that he was doing. It’s another good example of how, if you’re commonly thinking of immigrant workers, you may be thinking of agriculture, you may be thinking of maybe restaurants or construction. And certainly there are many, many immigrant workers sustaining those industries.
Brookings (10/17/22)
But they’ve become very essential to the fabric of our entire economy. It’s not very easy to disentangle them from the work that we need to do as a country. And that’s something that I don’t think a lot of our current rhetoric accounts for, is how many different jobs and how many different types of jobs around the country that these workers are fulfilling, that we’d miss them quite a lot if they weren’t there.
JJ: Let me just ask you, you tried to get responses from employers and from folks to say, “What’s going on here? What happened here? Why are you not accountable for this?” What happened with that exercise in trying to say: A person died, a person died, his family deserves compensation. What happened there?
NF: I did my absolute best. ProPublica takes it very seriously that we want everyone to have a chance to tell their side of the story. And so I did everything possible. It wasn’t just phone calls and emails. I came by the shipyard several times. I hand-delivered, actually, a letter with a list of questions to one of the shipyard executives several weeks before the story published, just in an attempt to try to get some answers.
I also spoke very briefly with the contractor that actually employed Elmer. I talked to him briefly, but he declined a comment on the advice of his lawyers.
I don’t know why Thoma-Sea, the shipyard where he was working, didn’t want to comment, because they told me very little. I did my best to reach out to them.
But I think it was really important to try to get their side of the story, especially since we also looked into the campaign finance records, and saw that, even though there are so many immigrants like Elmer, he was not the only one working at the shipyard, the company’s main managing director, top executive, has donated fairly heavily to many Louisiana politicians who have been vocal about their desire to either close the border, restrict immigration, and, honestly, what they think about immigrants in their own state.
JJ: I was struck, as I’ve said, throughout the piece, by how many powerful people and company representatives said they just had no comment. And it reminds me, it takes me back to independent reporting. It’s the families of the immigrant workers who are killed and then ignored and not given compensation; they look to the press, they need to speak, they want to get their voice out. And the powerful people, what’s in it for them? They don’t need to speak or justify or explain themselves. And it makes me mad, because I think Journalism 101 would send you back to those powerful people and demand some sort of answer from them.
The other thing is that you show up at this person’s home, and they’re like, “Oh, it’s really disrespectful to show up at the home of a company CEO where a worker has died on the job. It’s really disrespectful of journalists to bother us at home.” And I just think, there are people who need a press, an independent press, and there are people who don’t need it. It drives me angry. So I just want to say, the difference between getting access to people who are harmed and people who are harming, as a reporter, that’s a very different thing.
NF: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I just wanted to make sure that everyone gets to tell their side of the story. As a reporter, I try not to approach something speaking as if I know everything, but want folks to share their side.
And genuinely, too, I think a lot of people, including Elmer’s family, are still seeking answers. I was trying my best to get answers as well.
JJ: There are very particular legal regulations that folks hide behind, in a way, in terms of delivering protections. You’re not an employee, you’re a contracted worker, or you’re a subcontracted worker, and that allows them some degree of cover.
NF: And also, too, at the same time that it allows them some degree of cover when it comes to liability in an accident, it’s also what makes it possible for many of these companies to hire immigrant workers who do not have authorization to work. So it’s one of those things where it’s sometimes the only way that an immigrant worker can get a job, as they’re trying to maybe support their family, support themselves.
But it can leave them very vulnerable, because these layers of contractors can make it much harder for them, or their families if they pass away, to claim any type of support or resources. They still can, but the workers’ compensation system is pretty difficult to navigate without a lawyer in a straightforward case. And when you add on different barriers that contractors may face, and then certainly folks who don’t speak English as their first language, and then also you have legal status mixed in there, and folks being really worried that coming forward could endanger them.
All of that does tend to make it easier for the company to have these systems in place, and certainly disincentivizes many folks who need these resources, need benefits, need some type of financial compensation. It disincentivizes them from stepping forward, or just fighting through what can be a pretty difficult process.
JJ: And, not for nothing, incentivizes the companies themselves to set up this system in which their workers don’t have access to this kind of compensation.
NF: Yeah, I would imagine that—I can’t speak for anybody’s motives, but I do think they’re going to get the workers that they need, one way or the other, and some ways leave their workers with much more limited protections.
JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, if you have thoughts about the way that immigration and immigrants are covered, what would you have to say in terms of…. I had kind of a rant at the beginning about how I really am unhappy when immigrants are reduced to an electoral issue, when they’re human people and they have a story. And I feel like that’s what reporters should be doing.
But do you have thoughts in terms of the way that big media cover immigration, or just thoughts about something you’d like to see more or less of in terms of, big picture, the way the story is covered?
AP via PBS (10/12/24)
NF: Yeah, I think there are a lot of really wonderful immigration reporters out there who are doing their best to bring facts to a pretty charged conversation, honestly, a recurring conversation. I mean, I have not been in the industry for decades and decades and decades, but this is definitely the third election cycle that I’ve covered where immigration has been a pretty significant issue, whether because candidates have made it so, or people are concerned about folks arriving at the border. And I can say, as a journalist who is trying to present facts, it can sometimes be distressing to see the same misrepresentation of the facts repeated, sometimes without pushback or factchecking.
But the truth is, and I think the Elmer story shows this, is that candidates can say as much as they want that immigrants are stealing jobs, and the actual reality on the ground just does not really reflect that. And, at the same time, there’s a pretty significant narrative about, maybe, people who believe that immigrant workers get more than they do. I think you can see, in this case, that not only are many not getting more than a citizen worker, their families are often left abandoned and without any resources when something tragic happens.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with reporter Nicole Foy. Her article, “An Immigrant Died Building a Ship for the US Government. His Family Got Nothing,” can be found at ProPublica.org. Thank you so much, Nicole Foy, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
NF: Thank you for having me.
This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Janine Jackson.
Janine Jackson | Radio Free (2024-11-05T20:30:09+00:00) ‘You See Just How Many Immigrants Are Dying on the Job’: CounterSpin interview with Nicole Foy on immigration and labor. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/05/you-see-just-how-many-immigrants-are-dying-on-the-job-counterspin-interview-with-nicole-foy-on-immigration-and-labor/
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