"'Please cancel our cleaning': Virus leads many to cast aside household help," 25 March 2020

Household help, often performed by undocumented immigrants... has become a fixture of American homes... The coronavirus crisis is compelling many families to reassess... Unlike their employers, undocumented workers cannot collect unemployment or benefit from a government bailout... From New York to Los Angeles, families have been handling their help in different ways as they hunker down in their homes. Some have decided they cannot live without their help; a few feel committed to paying them while asking them not to come to work and still others have simply told workers to stop coming.

... Out of nearly 11 million undocumented immigrants, about 7.6 million are part of the American work force... The service industry employs more undocumented immigrants than any other, but they are also overrepresented in sectors like agriculture, construction and manufacturing. In almost every city in America, they are the backbone of the work force of nannies, housekeepers and gardeners who keep households running... They are also among the country’s most vulnerable workers... For many undocumented workers, instability is a fact of life, and abruptly losing a job is not uncommon. But rarely have they faced the loss of so much of their work at once.