Personal experience: how I worked illegally in the USA and why it is impossible to survive on $ 15 per hour

Travel blogger Maxim has been traveling around the world for several years. He shared his experience of how he had to work as an illegal in the United States. zen.yandex.

Photo: Shutterstock

In this article, the author talks about how to find work in the USA without a permit, and what you can count on when you are here in the status of “nobody,” both legally and professionally.

He received all the information “from the field,” that is, directly from migrants, or obtained as a result of physical interaction with the outside world.

Laws in the USA differ from state to state, salaries, taxes - everything is different, so everything that the author says for the most part concerns only the state of Washington.

Since his English left much to be desired, in search of work he could only rely on the Russian-speaking diaspora in Washington. And this “group” turned out to be quite active. Just a couple of hours after he posted the ad on Facebook, he received a couple of offers: for construction and for fish storage.

He preferred the first option, discarding his “resume”, which boiled down to the fact that he was a hardy “teapot” who could do everything, but could do nothing.

Almost instantly he received an answer that they were waiting for him at the facility tomorrow. “At six in the morning. On Saturday. This is America, there is workaholism here,” writes the author.

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“Another reason I decided to look for a job in Washington state is the decent minimum wage, here it is one of the highest in America at $10,50 an hour. And they “promised” me as much as 15 USD. By Russian standards, this seems like crazy money. But! Let’s sit down and count the expenses for the life of such an unpretentious homeless traveler like me,” says Maxim.

At that time, he had already acquired housing: he rented a room in a house from Mexicans for $ 600 a month, 25 km from Seattle. A trip to the city to a construction site cost $ 5,2 one way.

“The cheapest “cardboard” bread I saw cost $1,2. A normal one cost 3 bucks. A can of terrible beans costs around 1,5 USD,” writes the author.

With a “normal” salary of $15/hour, he couldn’t even afford to buy normal food. No fruits or vegetables. No meat.

“It was more profitable for me to eat at McDuck (3 burritos for a dollar) or at 7-11 (large pizza for 5 bucks), says the traveler. Do you understand now why Americans are so fat? Because everyone below the middle class is forced to eat this kind of crap.”

Therefore, when, wise by his everyday experience in the USA, he heard that the bus driver here receives 12 USD per hour, he wondered how in general one could survive on such pennies.

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“When every trip to the store costs about 20 bucks, renting an apartment is about 1500 a month. And if people have loans/cars, and everyone here has them, then it’s a complete ambush,” Maxim is surprised. -So most Americans work hard day and night, sometimes without days off. In relation to work, there is a whole gulf between the Russians and the Yankees.”

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