NYC’s 20,000 Migrants Are Fueling the City’s Underground Economy

It’s still dark out when the men in work boots start gathering by V&F Car Wash in the Bronx. They’re waiting along the highway in hopes of being picked up for construction jobs. The work is demanding and irregular, but it pays in cash and, crucially, doesn’t require work authorization.

The men are among the 20,000 migrants that have flooded into New York City since April, many of them bused from Republican-led border states like Texas and Arizona. Mayor Eric Adams declared a billion-dollar “state of emergency” and put up a tent city to temporarily house the influx of Central and South Americans that had overwhelmed the shelters.

A place to sleep is important. Finding work is equally urgent.

“I want to pay for my part,” said Rafael, 52, who lined up at the Bronx carwash on a recent morning looking for work. “The most important thing is that my wife and I can pay our bills.”

Bloomberg News is withholding the last names of migrants interviewed due to their immigration status. Under federal law, migrants won’t be authorized to work for months or years while they seek asylum, a designation that allows people who fear or suffer persecution to immigrate to the US. But that hasn’t stopped many migrants from seeking out work in New York, a sanctuary city where the minimum wage applies to undocumented workers and city guidelines say employees won’t ask about immigration status.

Underground Economy

Undocumented workers make up 7% of overall jobs in New York City and a third of construction laborers and around a quarter of dishwashers, cooks, housekeepers and cleaners, according to a 2017 city report with the latest available data. They help fuel an underground economy in a city that depends on immigrants to keep its construction sites, restaurant kitchens, delivery services and child-care services running.“These are people coming here hungry for work. They do the jobs many New Yorkers decline to do,” said Queens City Councilmember Julie Won. “These are the people we should be welcoming with open arms. These are the people that are going to continue to be the backbone of our economy.”

Immigrants make up 37% of New Yorkers, but 44% of the labor force, according to the city. Among undocumented workers, 78% were working or seeking work, compared with 65% of US-born New Yorkers. They contribute $40 billion to the state’s gross domestic product, or about 3%, and pay $1.1 billion in state and local taxes, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute.

It’s not just New York. In Florida, undocumented workers have stepped in to help the state rebuild homes and buildings that were destroyed during Hurricane Ian. In California, they make up about one in 16 workers in the state, many of which work in farming, food processing and other “essential” fields that worked in-person throughout the pandemic.

Many undocumented immigrants already worked in New York City’s informal economy even before the arrival of new migrants. Now many of the 20,000 new arrivals have joined them at the city’s so-called paradas, sidewalks outside of Home Depots and other hardware stores where day laborers line up as early as 5 am, swarming around cars as they stop by in hopes of contractors picking them up for a painting or construction job.“We’ve been looking for work for days,” said Rafael, who fled political and economic turmoil in Venezuela in May with his wife and three children.

After months of traveling through Central American jungles, Rafael and his family took a three day bus ride from Arizona to Washington, DC, in July. They spent two days at a shelter before boarding a second bus to New York, where US Customs and Border Protection had assigned the family a court appearance.

While the family of five has found temporary housing in a Bronx shelter and enrolled their kids in public schools, work has proven more elusive. Rafael took a 40-hour work site safety course offered by a local charity and found some construction work. This kind of work can pay as much as $130 a day. His son might join him on non-school days when he turns 18 next month, said his wife, Leydisbell, sitting in a park a few blocks from the shelter.“Because we don't have a social security number, we can't find permanent work,” she said.

Having a work record before asylum and authorization are granted could also hurt migrants’ cases because it violates federal law, said Diana Moreno, the deputy director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment, a nonprofit. Asylum seekers aren’t eligible to receive employment authorization for at least 180 days after they submit their application. Moreno called the paradox an “impossible situation.”

The Biden administration in October began a new program offering some new Venezuelan migrants so-called humanitarian parole, which creates a legal pathway to work for some 24,000 asylum seekers. But for other migrants, it could take years to get official work authorization, said Jodi Ziesemer, director of the Immigrant Protection Unit at the New York Legal Assistance Group. The humanitarian parole program won’t apply to migrants like Rafael who are already in the US.

Meanwhile, the city is “obligated” to provide food, shelter, and all the other needs, Adams said at an October briefing. “The irony of it all is that while we're telling 21,000 working-age people that they can't work, we’re dealing with a shortage of jobs” that need to be filled, he said.When Masbia Soup Kitchen Network learned migrants were flooding into the city, the soup kitchen operator bought up 100 pairs of construction boots from Amazon at $100 a pop and lined up a donor to help shoulder the cost. Nonprofits have also been helping migrants enroll in construction site safety training, a must-have for contractors who may overlook immigration status but are wary of the city-enforced safety checks that come with heavy fines.“Giving people their dignity is very important,” said Masbia executive director Alexander Rapaport. “And dignity means they can fend for themselves and make a buck.”

Little Protection

These jobs, however, offer little protection when it comes to pay and security. Employers often pay immigrants for fewer hours than they worked, a practice known as wage theft, and such workers also face name calling and other forms of racial discrimination, according to a 2022 report by the Center for Migration Studies. Undocumented workers are also often in higher-risk jobs, the research found.

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