migrant workers

These workers were promised green cards following Hurricane Katrina. Instead they were issued temporary visas that bound them to a single employer.

Sold an American Dream, these workers from India wound up living a nightmare

12:39pm January 23, 2023

by Dave Davies

After Hurricane Katrina in 2006, hundreds of workers from India were promised jobs in what labor organizer Saket Soni calls "one of the largest cases of forced labor in modern U.S. history."

Anish Adhikari, now 26, worked construction jobs in Qatar for 33 months in the lead-up to the World Cup. In this 2021 photo, he poses inside the new Lusail stadium, which he helped build and which will host the World Cup final on Dec. 18. Adhikari says the Nepali agent who got him the job misled him about working conditions in Qatar: "They sell a dream that's not reality."

Death and dishonesty: Stories of two workers who built the World Cup stadiums in Qatar

10:45am December 02, 2022

by Lauren Frayer

Vinod Kumar of India and Anish Adhikari of Nepal are among the many migrant workers who helped build the stadiums. Adhikari says he was misled about working conditions. Kumar died on the job.

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Workers clean and disinfect the floor at the National Exhibition and Convention Center NECC, the largest makeshift hospital, in Shanghai. Many jobs in these temporary facilities are drawn from the pool of unemployed migrant workers.

Health & Safety

Migrant workers in China find new jobs — and precarious conditions — in COVID control

1:26pm April 20, 2022

by Emily Feng

China's economic downturn has left thousands of migrant workers unemployed. They're pivoting to work in COVID control — and have strong concerns about how they are being treated.

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Aboubakar Soumahoro speaks at a protest in Rome last month. "If the workers lack dignity and rights, the food they provide is virtually rotten," he says in a new short documentary, The Invisibles.

World News

In Italy, A Migrants' Advocate Fights For The 'Invisibles'

11:01am August 05, 2020

by Sylvia Poggioli

"The reality is that laborers work at the limit of human dignity," Aboubakar Soumahoro tells NPR. He's the subject of a new documentary, The Invisibles, shot at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Qatar charity workers prepare food parcels for migrant laborers living under quarantine on April 16 amid the coronavirus pandemic in Doha. A restaurant better known for fine dining has lent its facilities to Qatar Charity to feed migrant workers, of whom

Migrants Are Among The Worst Hit By COVID-19 In Saudi Arabia And Gulf Countries

1:42pm May 05, 2020

by Ruth Sherlock

Even with stringent lockdowns, the coronavirus has spread through migrant communities in some Middle Eastern countries where foreign workers live in cramped quarters.

Prema Thakur, an official for the Champawat district in India, teaches Pratap Singh Bora, a 56-year-old migrant laborer from Nepal, how to write his name in Hindi.

A 56-Year-Old Finally Learned To Write His Name — Because Of A Coronavirus Lockdown

8:20am April 25, 2020

by Sushmita Pathak

Pratap Singh Bora is a migrant laborer from Nepal who had to leave his construction job in India and is now living in a relief camp. But there's an upside to this turn of events.

A safe-distancing enforcement officer wearing a red armband checks his phone at a food court in Singapore on Saturday. The officers have been deployed to ensure people maintain distance from one another, as Singapore grapples with a spike in coronavirus c

Singapore Sees Surge In COVID-19 Cases, Now Has Highest Number In Southeast Asia

2:05pm April 20, 2020

by Michael Sullivan

Singapore reported 1,426 new cases on Monday and now has the highest number of reported cases in Southeast Asia. Most of those recently infected are foreign workers staying in cramped dormitories.

Migrant workers and their family members line up outside a New Delhi bus terminal hoping to board a bus for their villages. Millions have lost their ability to earn an income because of the government-imposed lockdown aimed at limiting the spread of the c

Health & Safety

Coronavirus Lockdown Sends Migrant Workers On A Long And Risky Trip Home

9:06pm March 31, 2020

Amid a 21-day lockdown to help control the spread of the coronavirus, millions of workers in India's cities have no income, no food — and so are heading back to their villages.

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Barrels of fish sit on a dock after being unloaded from a boat last year at the port in Songkhla, Thailand. Many migrants work in jobs in the country's seafood industry.

World News

Fearing Thailand's New Restrictions, Tens Of Thousands Of Migrant Workers Flee

3:30pm July 03, 2017

by Merrit Kennedy

New labor regulations, in which workers without proper documents face prison time, prompted the sudden exodus. It could cause a labor shortage. The government put the law on hold for 120 days.

Teacher Sarah Ross and students (from left to right) Ximena, age 4, Yareli, age 3, and Kendra, age 2 at the Indiana Migrant Preschool Center, a free preschool for migrant children ages 2 to 5. The school teaches students in English and Spanish with the go

Schools Hustle To Reach Kids Who Move With The Harvest, Not The School Year

2:40pm October 31, 2016

by Peter Balonon-Rosen

The children of migrant farm workers are some of the country's poorest, most undereducated and hardest to track down. Programs like one in southern Indiana are working to change that.