What was the sadness of needing "cheaper and more docile" humans to work for you like...

"Migrant children produce the food we eat and the clothes we wear, working for household names like Cheerios and J. Crew.  They work in extremely hazardous conditions in factories, construction sites, and slaughterhouses.  Exhausted from this grueling work, some drop out of school."

~ Anita Alem

https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2023/03/what-the-child-labor-crackdown-is-missing/

"The causes for the exploitation of these migrant children’s labor are structural and multifold.  Over the past two years, 250,000 unaccompanied children, frequently from Central America, have entered the United States.  First, children are provided little support after entry.  The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is responsible for placing these children with families in the United States, has reduced protections like background checks and offers little if any case management services.  In an illustrative secret recording, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra derided staff for not processing children more efficiently: 'If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich.'

Second, migrant children feel pressure to work, as children often enter the country with plan to send remittances to their family.  Others are expected to contribute financially to the households they have been placed with in America.  Still others are pushed into labor as a result of human trafficking. Many of these children are not of legal working age.  Those who are, though, are eligible for work authorization, but often have difficulty navigating the permitting system on their own.  Thus, migrant children frequently obtain employment via fraudulent documentation, and as unauthorized migrant workers, they are already particularly vulnerable to poor labor conditions.

Coupled with a tight labor market, employers looking to child labor for 'cheaper and more docile workers,' and some states attempting to loosen child labor laws, it comes as no surprise that these migrant children have become part of 'a new economy of exploitation.'  As Dreier stated, 'people often say that this is something that’s hiding in plain sight. But, I mean, it’s barely hiding. It is in plain sight.'”

~ Anita Alem

https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2023/03/what-the-child-labor-crackdown-is-missing/