A 16-year-old boy was killed while working at a sawmill in Northern Wisconsin. It appears that he was illegally employed there, according this this article from Wisconsin Public Radio:
In Wisconsin, minors are prohibited from working in many occupations in logging and sawmills. According to the state Department of Workforce Development, children under 18 are prohibited from entering a sawmill building.
Since 2018, there has been a 69% increase in children being employed illegally, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
And yet Republicans are leading efforts to loosen regulations on child labor, including in Wisconsin, in an effort to protect businesses from a labor shortage.
It's an outrageous story. There's a labor shortage in the U.S., and yet adult workers who can't find jobs in Central America aren't allowed to immigrate to America to fill jobs here. But children who trek thousands of miles without a parent or guardian to the U.S. border are allowed in, but are then put to work in jobs, often brutal and dangerous ones. Alongside American children whose families are so poor they must take illegal jobs, or jobs made newly legal by loosened rules.
