MANY JAMAICAN women have chosen to migrate to 'greener pastures' in the United States of America looking for work in order to take care of families back home.While a large percentage of money remitted to Jamaica comes from these women, there are still major questions about their legitimacy overseas.
Mothers migrate to support themselves, their families, and others in the short run, and to secure better opportunities (through obtaining legal residence in the United States) for themselves and their kin in the long run. But, while many travel on non-immigrant visas which promise only visitation rights, others, using the same entry document, find underground employment as domestic workers or nannies to American families.
In her study, 'West Indian Child Care Workers and Employers', researcher Shellee Colen said that in their experience in the American households, West Indian women confront the legacies of slavery, colonialism, underdevelopment, and Caribbean articulation into a world capitalist system and the constraints these place on fulfilling their gender-defined obligations.
"Social and economic shifts in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s created an acute need for childcare across classes. Such factors as the baby boomers' own baby boom coupled with the rising labour force participation of mothers and continued expectations of female responsibility for reproductive labour left more families confronting inadequate options for childcare. In the United States, labour force participation of women with children under 18 increased from 42 per cent in 1970 to 63 per cent in 1986; by 1986, more than 70 per cent of mothers of school-age children were in the work force; 54 per cent of all mothers with children under six and 51 per cent of all mothers with children under three were employed in 1986 (Kahn and Kamerman 1987: 11). In 1987, '50.8 per cent of all new mothers remained in the job market', while '63 per cent of new mothers with college degrees' did so ('Working Mother is Now the Norm 1988'), according to Colen.
FULL RESPONSIBILITY
For the Jamaican worker, live-in jobs give them full responsibility for all of a household's maintenance and childcare. This is especially true for undocumented workers needing sponsorship. Many of these gave up professional careers in Jamaica, to earn more in the Big Apple.
But working in a household as a child-caregiver is not unusual for Jamaican and other West Indian women. Fostering has a long history in the Caribbean. Many of the current generation of caregivers were once foster children themselves, as their mothers also had migrated in a similar fashion.
The issue of illegal West Indian child-caregivers reached a climax recently when at least one high-profile nominees' political ambitions were torpedoed by a 'nanny problem'.
ILLEGAL NANNIES
The issue of illegal nannies only seems to come up around Senate confirmation time. But illegal nannies are commonplace in cities where affluent two-career couples are raising children. Around Washington, people are especially aware of the political risks of employing an undocumented domestic worker, but that often does not stop them from hiring them.
Since 1993, the nanny problem has surfaced repeatedly in top administration jobs. Zoe Baird, a lawyer who was President Clinton's first choice for attorney general, was undone by her failure to pay Social Security taxes for an undocumented domestic worker. Kimba Wood, a federal district judge and another Clinton pick for attorney general, broke no laws and paid the taxes for her baby sitter, an illegal immigrant, but still her nomination was nixed. Lani Guinier was Clinton's pick to direct the Justice Department's civil rights division, and though Clinton cited her legal writings on race for ditching her nomination, she too failed to pay taxes on a domestic worker.
The Bush administration, similarly, knows about Nannygate. Linda Chavez's bid to become Bush's first-term labour secretary crashed after it was revealed she gave money and help to an illegal immigrant who had once done chores for her.
Even high-profile people say the significance of the legal issue can elude them.
"I wasn't forthcoming in telling the Bush White House that I had this woman living with me," Chavez says. "But frankly it was something I didn't initially think about." Former Police Commissioner and U.S. Homeland Security nominee Bernard Kerik said he will leave Giuliani Partners, former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's consulting firm.
UNPAID TAXES
Kerik, 49, was tapped by President Bush earlier this month to head the Department of Homeland Security. He abruptly withdrew his name on December 10 after revealing that he had not paid all required taxes for a family nanny-housekeeper and that the woman may have been in the country illegally.
While hiring an undocumented nanny is illegal in the United States, not everyone considers it a real crime.
The issue is socially acceptable enough that Kerik pinned his exit from the public scene on his nanny and not his other brewing controversies. Though the Nannygate scandal is embarrassing to Kerik since he would have been responsible for enforcing immigration law, the problem is less salacious than others recently surfacing around him, like the 'love nest' where Kerik allegedly pursued two extramarital affairs at once: the clandestine marriage early in his life that apparently had not been disclosed to the White House and the accusations of ethical lapses over his law enforcement career. A rash of other scandals soon followed, including allegations that he had connections with people suspected of doing business with the mob and accusations that he had simultaneous extramarital affairs with two women.
With so many top-ranking persons hiring unpapered household workers in that country, it is not true that they are well paid or well treated. Documentary evidence would suggest that many of these women are forced to take what is dished out with no grounds or means of protest. They are exposed to poor pay, physical mistreatment and with few protections.
LA Times-Washington Post. Sunday Gleaner reporters also contributed to this story.
