Executive Action on Immigration Will Improve the Lives of Women in

America
Topline: The November 20th directives from the Secretary of Homeland Security on
immigration will go a long way toward promoting economic security and family unity
for immigrant and native-born women in the United States. While only Congress can
permanently fix our broken immigration system, these executive actions are a good
first step in keeping families together, improving the economic position of
immigrant women, and ending the wage and employment exploitation that leaves
many immigrant women vulnerable to abuse.
Executive action will keep families together:
- While there are 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the country, many
more people16.6 million in factlive in mixed-status families, with documented
and undocumented members. Nearly half of the undocumented population are
women.
- The November 20th directives will mean that up to 5 million unauthorized
immigrantsthe majority young DREAMers and parents of citizen and permanent
resident children who have been in the country for 5 yearswill gain temporary
protection from deportation and the ability to work legally. This means that millions
of families will no longer have to live under the constant threat of deportation.
- Keeping families together is a key principal of American democracy: Roughly
205,000 parents of citizen children were deported between 2010 and 2012 alone,
and thousands of undocumented children are in foster care each year because their
parents were deported.
Executive action will help womens economic position:
- Immigrant women face a larger gender wage gap than their native-born
counterparts, and undocumented immigrant women earn the least out of all groups,
earning only 71 cents on the dollar, compared with undocumented men.
- Allowing undocumented women to gain temporary work permits means that their
wages go up, on average, by 8.5 percent. Higher earnings translates into greater
financial security for them and their families, and broader economic growth for all.
- The vast majority of deportationsmore than 9 in 10 in 2013are of men, leaving
women behind to bear the brunt of both raising children in the U.S. and providing
for their family. Deferring the deportations of millions of people will mean that fewer
women will be put in such precarious positions.

Executive action will make it less likely that women in the workforce face
exploitation:
- Undocumented workers as a whole are more likely to face workplace exploitation
such as wage theft or overtime violations, and are less likely to report such issues,
for fear of being discovered and/or deported.
- Undocumented immigrant women face a second hurdle in the workplace, as many
are employed in occupationssuch as domestic carethat have some of the
highest proportions of these issues. The combined effect makes undocumented
immigrant women some of the most vulnerable workers in the labor force. In fact
they are nearly three times more likely to experience minimum wage violations than
native-born women.
- Giving millions of immigrant women the ability to obtain temporary legal
protections will allow them to more easily stand up against workplace abuses, and
less likely to have unscrupulous employers hold the threat of deportation over their
heads, as a way of exploiting them. Likewise, with more people challenging badapple employers, all workplaces, for all workers will be made safer.