Eater NY: Why NYC’s Undocumented Restaurant Workers Are the Forgotten Victims of the Shutdown

Government help is nearly impossible to get, even though undocumented workers in the United States pay $11.74 billion in taxes each year, equivalent to 8 percent of their incomes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. (By comparison, the top 1 percent pays an effective 5.4 percent.) Because undocumented workers are, at least on paper, employees with social security numbers, restaurants still take taxes, unemployment, and social security out of every paycheck. But because the documentation submitted to employers is fake, when it comes time to reap the benefits of those payments, these workers are invisible to the government and get nothing. Read more