Immigration Article of the Day: Child Migrant Workers: The Invisible Children? by Ewa Rejman

Child Migrant Workers: The Invisible Children? by Ewa Rejman, 52 Denver Journal of International Law & Policy 255 (2024)

Abstract

From February to December 2023, The New York Times published a series of investigative articles on child migrant workers who take jobs that are off-limits to American children and simply "disappear from the system" while companies and government officials continued to shift blame to avoid responsibility. This case study serves as a starting point for analyzing violations of child migrant workers' rights in light of child-specific risks and child-specific forms of persecution. This Article focuses on international human rights law obligations that the United States has failed to adequately fulfill and addresses potential objections to these obligations' binding character. It explains the way of identifying human rights violations and declaring a state's responsibility for them. It further identifies concrete violations of the best-interest principle, the non-discrimination norm, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, and the right to education, classifying these violations into three categories of failures-failure to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights. To this end, the Article relies on the commentaries of the U.N. Treaty Monitoring Bodies, the jurisprudence of the international tribunals, and empirical evidence on the development of the child. The Article emphasizes how the multiple and intersecting vulnerabilities that should make child migrant workers entitled to additional protection became precisely the reason why they were not granted protection and how, instead, this enabled a vicious cycle of violations.

KJ