University of Miami Law Review Volume 53 Number 4 Article 30 7-1-1999 Immigration, the Servant Problem, and the Legacy of the Domestic Labor Debate: "Where Can You Find Good Help These Days!" Mary Romero Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr Part of the Immigration Law Commons, and the Labor and Employment Law Commons Recommended Citation Mary Romero, Immigration, the Servant Problem, and the Legacy of the Domestic Labor Debate: "Where Can You Find Good Help These Days!", 53 U. Miami L. Rev. 1045 (1999) Available at: https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol53/iss4/30 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Miami Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Immigration, the Servant Problem, and the Legacy of the Domestic Labor Debate: "Where Can You Find Good Help These Days!" By MARY ROMERO* AUGUST 28, 1998 I. INTRODUCTION Before beginning my first college teaching post in 1980, I stayed at the home of a colleague who employed a live-in domestic worker. Until then, I had been unaware of the practice of hiring teenage, undocu- mented Mexican women as live-in household help, nor had I had access to the social or "private" space of an employer. I was struck by the ease in which this middle-class family violated the law, participated in the underground economy, and most of all, disregarded their employee's rights.