Analysis Of The Working Poor

David Shipler, former professor at the prestigious, Princeton University, wrote a spectacular novel that explains the importance of the undocumented workers in the United States. Shipler sways the reader to comprehend the horrible living conditions that these invaluable individuals must endure. He mentions that the workers have little to no say in their living affairs. To elaborate, in chapter four of the novel, The Working Poor, Shipler does a stupendous job on conveying his ideas of the importance of undocumented immigrant workers in the United States who endure many hardships.
With the use of pathos, Shipler does a great job showing the reader how these immigrant workers are forced to withstand some of the worst living conditions imaginable.
They smell discussing. It is horrible to be there they prefer to sleep on the floor they are afraid of getting disease by sleeping on the mattresses” (Shipler 97). The immigrants resort to sleeping on the floor because the beds are so contaminated that they do not want to catch diseases from sleeping on them. It is a sad day when someone cannot sleep in a bed after a long hard day in 100 degree weather picking strawberries for 10 plus hours because the mattress looks like the mattress Regan MacNeil was chained to and exercised on. Even the bathrooms are grimy, the workers do not even have stalls just bare toilets and showers, these poor workers cannot have any privacy. More horrendously, aliens are usually paid well under minimum wage, around five dollars an hour. More importantly, these abused workers are exposed to all the poisonous pesticides that are sprayed on the fruits and vegetables that they pick. Even in the winter when the farming business is dormant, these immigrant farm hands work unbelievably hard all 365 days of the year. Most, if not all Mexican immigrants send money back to Mexico:
Subsequently, these workers very seldomly get to voice their feelings on these horrible living conditions because they do not have any sort of citizenship from the United States. This means they literally are unable to complain to anyone one because they are scared of being deported. This fear also prevents immigrant workers from getting health insurance and tax returns from the IRS. This even means that no unions or safety inspections to keep the working place safe for these aliens. These immigrants will not go out in public in big groups due to the threat of boarder control spotting them. On the other hand, the act of jumping the U.S. border is probably the most dangerous feat these immigrants ever