As the winter sun rises behind him, Carlos Esteban Rios sits in a Costa Mesa parking lot, waiting for a ride from a boss he’s never met and looking over some chemistry homework he might never turn in.
It’s a school day, Wednesday, Feb. 28, and Rios’ plan for the next few hours is this: He hopes to spend the morning working a backyard renovation project and then, with luck, catch a ride to school to attend his afternoon classes.
The hectic schedule is routine stuff for Rios. He says he works almost any hour, at almost any job – washing dishes, trimming plants, removing wallpaper – to finance his life here and send money to his family in Guatemala.
“If I don’t work, they don’t eat,” Rios said in his now preferred language, English.
But when he’s not working, Rios said, he goes to school. While he concedes he’s no fan of English lit or U.S. history, he loves math and environmental science. The chemistry project he is rechecking (it’s about the different properties of liquids) is important to him.
“I actually like this (stuff),” Rios said, holding out his papers and shaking his head in mock surprise.
“Funny, huh.”
Still, it’s not an even split. When Rios has to choose between work and school, work wins. Even today, if he can’t get a ride, the chemistry homework will be late or never turned in.
It’s been that way since he came to the United States in early 2021, when COVID-19 vaccines were just starting to become available. The vaccines, in addition to helping ease the pandemic, kicked off a national hiring spree – and an international mad dash for some of those U.S. jobs.
A lot of those dashers were kids. That includes Rios. The student who helps feed his family is still just 15, meaning he’s been working a treadmill of odd jobs since long before his first shave.
None of that work has been legal. Rios arrived on a temporary visa, but it expired a couple years back. What’s more, the Child Labor Act of 1938 makes it…
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