The Unlucky Immigrants
The six victims of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse were all immigrants from Mexico and Central America. When the container ship hit the bridge at 1:30 a.m. on March 26, they were on the bridge doing the work that many immigrants are required to do. That work eventually pushed them into the cold Patapsco River.
The Dali cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Photo: Reuters
The next day, the bodies of two victims named Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes and Dorlian Castillo were discovered and pulled from a red pickup truck nearly 8 meters underwater.
The four remaining missing workers are believed to have died, including Maynor Suazo from Honduras; Jose Lopez from Guatemala; Miguel Luna from El Salvador; and another person whose name has not been released. Two other workers have been rescued.
Churches held vigils for the missing workers, and advocacy groups quickly raised $98,000 for the victims’ families. Some were not surprised that all the victims were immigrants, even though they make up less than 10 percent of the population in Maryland’s largest city.
The victims worked as maintenance workers employed by Brawner Builders, a local construction company that has been cited seven times for safety violations since 2018. Company officials said they were devastated by the loss.
Do the work no one wants to do
One reason immigrants were the victims of the accident, said Lucia Islas, president of the nonprofit Comité Latino de Baltimore, is because they do the jobs that no one else wants. They are maintenance workers, a low-profile profession that puts in the hard work of working through the night to keep the country running.
Migrant jobs often offer the lowest pay and worst conditions, but some still take them to support their families and lay the foundation for a better life for their children and grandchildren.
Meanwhile, others are working to send money home to relatives in less affluent economies. According to Mexico’s central bank, Mexican migrant workers sent more than $60 billion back to their country in 2023.
Migrant workers often work in high-risk industries such as construction. Photo: Spencer Platt
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Latino workers are more likely to die on the job than other racial and ethnic groups. Latinos are overrepresented in high-risk jobs: 51% of construction workers, 34% of slaughterhouse workers, and 61% of landscapers.
Community leaders say many Latinos in the city take low-paying jobs with few benefits. “The only option is to go to work, even if it’s not the same salary as a citizen,” said Carlos Crespo, 53, a mechanic from Mexico.
Immigration will be at the heart of the 2024 US presidential election
The Baltimore Bridge disaster comes amid a U.S. presidential election in which immigration is once again a top concern for voters. Democratic President Joe Biden's administration is struggling to manage a recent record number of border crossings.
Meanwhile, Republican candidate Donald Trump has also often sought to limit immigration. "Other countries are emptying out their prisons, their insane asylums, their mental institutions, putting everybody, including a bunch of terrorists, into our country. Now they're in our country," Trump said at a campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, in January.
In addition, Mr. Trump has vowed to significantly increase deportations of immigrants if he is re-elected on November 5. Mr. Trump’s criticism has been directed at immigrants who are trying to illegally cross the border into the United States. However, this also affects immigrants in general.
"A lot of people don't take us Latinos seriously," said mechanic Crespo. "They see us as animals or think we live off the government. But that's not true, we pay taxes too."
The sacrifices of the missing may be worth remembering as anti-immigrant sentiment resurfaces ahead of the US presidential election in November. And when the Francis Scott Key Bridge is rebuilt, it is certain that immigrants will be the ones doing the building.
Hoai Phuong (according to CNN, Reuters)
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