Some Amazon Warehouses are Losing Hundreds of Workers After Changes in Legal Status

At an Amazon warehouse that employs 3,700 people, hundreds of workers recently lost their job, reports the New York Times.

'They are among thousands of foreign workers across the country who have been swept up in a quiet purge, pushed out of jobs in places where their labor was in high demand and at times won high praise.'

While raids to nab workers in the country without legal permission in fields and Home Depot parking lots have grabbed attention, the job dismissals at the Amazon warehouse are part of the Trump administration's effort to thin the ranks of immigrants who had legal authorization to work... Such dismissals are happening at many of Amazon's more than 1,000 facilities around the country, including in Massachusetts and the warehouse in Staten Island that fills orders for millions of New Yorkers. At one fulfillment center in Florida, hundreds were let go, a person familiar with the site said... 'We're supporting employees impacted by the government's recent changes in immigration policy,' Richard Rocha, an Amazon spokesperson, said in a statement. The company has pointed workers to various resources, including outside free or low-cost legal services...

The dismissals came with remarkable speed. On May 30, the Supreme Court granted temporary approval for the Trump administration to revoke a program known as 'humanitarian parole,' which had allowed more than 500,000 migrants feeling political turmoil in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to quickly get work permits if they had a fiscal sponsor... On June 12, the Department of Homeland Security said it had begun notifying enrollees that the program was ending, saying the immigrants had been poorly vetted and undercut American workers...

On June 22, Amazon told managers around the country in an email, which was obtained by The New York Times, that it had 'received the first list from D.H.S. identifying impacted Amazon employees' from the parole program, as well as 'some employees outside of this specific program whose work authorization is similarly affected.' Amazon let the managers know that the next day, the affected workers would receive push notifications in the employee app about the change. Unless the workers could provide alternate work authorization documents in the next five days, they would be suspended without pay and ultimately dismissed.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.