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3 DePaul J. Soc. Just. 245 (2009-2010)
The Dirty Side of Domestic Work: An Underground Economy and the Exploitation of Undocumented Workers

handle is hein.journals/depjsj3 and id is 261 raw text is: THE DIRTY SIDE OF DOMESTIC WORK: AN UNDERGROUND ECONOMY AND THE EXPLOITATION OF UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS NANCY ZARATE BYRD* The image of an immigrant woman in the role of a domestic worker dominates our culture and mirrors the reality of an un- derground economy in the United States. Political and eco- nomic situations in Latin American and Caribbean countries have fueled legal and illegal immigration to the United States, which has become a source of cheap labor for U.S. employers.' In television shows and movies, the domestic worker is routinely portrayed as a person of color who speaks broken English and will never be able to fully assimilate into the dominant culture of the United States. The character of Rosario in the popular, Emmy Award-winning television series Will and Grace was a live-in domestic worker, who was an undocumented Latina, who spoke very broken English, who never wore anything besides a maid's uniform, and who eventually had to marry one of the show's gay male characters so that her employer would not * J.D. 2008, DePaul University College of Law. I would like to thank my family and friends for their support and encouragement. Special thanks to Professor Sumi Cho for her guidance and feedback. 1 Kristi L. Graunke, Just Like One of the Family: Domestic Violence Para- digms and Combating On-the-Job Violence Against Household Workers in the United States, 9 MICH. J. GENDER & L. 131, 151-152 (2002); See also IMMI- GRATION RESEARCH FOR A NEW CENTURY 347 (Nancy Foner et al. eds., 2000)(stating that more than two-thirds of domestic workers in New York are foreign born); Evelyn Nieves, Domestic Workers Take on Dirty Employers, The Associated Press, 2008, http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=4995216. The term latina will be used in this article to refer to a female of Hispanic descent. 2+5

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