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Sweatshop.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Asian and Latino immigrants flocked to the United States, rivaling in sheer numbers the trans-Atlantic immigration of a century earlier. Many came because even minimum wage work in the United States paid five to ten times more than they could earn in their homelands. These Asian workers, photographed in 1991 as they labored in a garment shop in lower Manhattan, typified the work experience of many immigrants: monotonous, low wage work in conditions reminiscent of clothing industry sweatshops from earlier in the twentieth century.


Source: Andrea Ades Vásquez—American Social History Project.