Unemployed restaurant deliveryman Jianhua Wang says there’s no help left for him in New York’s Chinatown. Not in this economic climate. “Chinatown is full of compatriots,” he says, “but there are many cheaters.”
Wang claims that he fell prey to Chinatown’s cheaters at the onset of the economic crisis last July, when his down-and-out boss at a Chinese restaurant in New Mexico started borrowing $700 from Wang’s $2,000 monthly salary. “We were friends,”Wang explains, “or I thought so at the time.”Wang demanded that his employer return the money and was promptly fired.
Refusing to leave the restaurant until the employer returned his earnings, he was escorted off the premises by police. Previously living in restaurant-arranged accommodations, he was forced onto the streets.
Though Wang holds a U.S. work permit, his former employer was a green-card holder. Knowing that Wang understands little English and even less about labor law, he correctly presumed that Wang would not seek legal recourse. Back in New York City, the original site of his arrival in the United States, 56-year-old Wang embarked on a fruitless job search—at a time when mainstream American laborers were also desperately struggling to find employment.
Chinese laborers like Wang, often at various stages of documentation and English proficiency, depend solely on Chinatown’s social services and employment. Insularity allows the Chinese community to circumvent restrictions imposed by citizenship and labor laws and employ many of their community’s most marginalized members. But with the ongoing economic downturn, employment and labor conditions are tougher for Chinatown’s chronically poor blue-collar workers.
Wang now lives in Flushing, Queens, where Chinese-run Jieshao Suo, or employment agencies, send America’s Chinese labor force to restaurants throughout the nation. According to those at the employment agencies, finding jobs for eager workers has become very difficult over the past year. Jenny Geng of Red Apple Employee Agency says that, while the situation has improved since earlier this year, especially in the restaurant industry, finding jobs for her customers is much more difficult than before. “Bosses are simply more demanding in the areas of salary and qualifications,” Geng said.
This is unsurprising in a country where unemployment is rapidly approaching record highs. ESL and documentation concerns further complicate unemployment in the Chinese community, distancing channels of support offered by mainstream American law and society.
“Chinese help Chinese,” says Xiao Chen, assistant manager of a popular Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side, and a native of Fujian. In every New York borough, Chinatown streets are lined with everything from law offices to medical facilities run by and for Chinese.
Geng explains that the vast majority of employers are Chinese: Almost all of her business exists within the confines of her ethnic enclave in Flushing. “Language is the biggest problem,” she says of her documented customers, which she claims comprise the majority of her clientele at Red Apple.
Inherent dangers exist in operating within the tight-knit Chinese community and outside the confines of legality since labor conditions go entirely unchecked. “Before, if someone was unhappy in the workplace, [Chinese workers] could go anywhere,” explains Chen explains. “But now, people are just happy to have a job. They don’t care if the pay will be much lower.”
The recession-era Chinese worker faces unemployment and lower wages, like all U.S. workers, but Xiao Chen notes that the extra-legality of their situation—the product of language or law—means that, “Chinese will be harder off.”
Elvin Zi, a 21-year-old beauty salon worker, is currently applying for American citizenship, but since the beginning of the economic recession, Zi has seen a decrease in pay. “Sometimes when business is not really good, the income is lower,” Zi says. Asked if he addressed this concern with his boss, he said, “I never signed a contract.”
Sometimes bosses, bound by friendship, maintain their unwritten contract with employees. Xiao Ping is an undocumented nail salon worker living in Flushing
Chinatown. After several failed attempts at illegally obtaining documentation cost him thousands, Ping claims that he is often wary of the Chinese community. He says that illegal workers’ dismissals are frequent and arbitrary, but he claims that his boss would never fire him.
“Our boss is good. Our work is like a home,” Ping says. Nevertheless, he says that one of his co-workers was recently dismissed without notice. While Ping cited poor work quality as a reason for dismissal, he also claimed that the worker “looked too old.” Ping is 46.
Jianhua Wang claims that he is often outwardly turned away for being too old, and he also says that southern Chinese often refuse to hire him because he is from Henan province in northern China.
Depleting his savings from his first few years in the States, Wang is still desperate for employment. He understands that legal reparation from his former boss in New Mexico is probably a pipe dream. On top of all of this, Wang was recently diagnosed with cancer of the liver, and he fears impending medical expenses. He is one of many Chinese laborers failed by Chinatown’s precarious support system, breaking under the weight of economic crisis. And he is left wondering if there is any potential for rescue from an uncertain future.
