Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › United States

Undocumented Workers v. United States (Report No. 50/16)

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights · United States · 2016-11-30 · Regional court or body

Citation: Case 12.834
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Does US labour law protect undocumented workers equally?

What the court decided

No. Barring undocumented workers from some remedies breached equality and the right to work and fair conditions under the American Declaration.

In plain language

Undocumented workers injured at work or not paid in the US took their case to the Inter-American Commission. It said the US must give them the same labour protection as others.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Pekerja tanpa dokumen yang cedera atau tidak dibayar di AS membawa perkaranya ke Komisi Inter-Amerika. Komisi menyatakan AS wajib memberi mereka perlindungan kerja yang sama.

Pertanyaan: Apakah hukum ketenagakerjaan AS melindungi pekerja tanpa dokumen secara setara?

What happened afterwards

  • 2016-11-30: Report adopted.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/iachr-50-16/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

Keywords: case law; jurisprudence; judicial decisions; comparative constitutional law; courts and migration; judicial behavior; litigation outcomes; refugee law; non-refoulement; citizenship and nationality; empirical legal studies; empirical legal scholarship; quantitative legal research; statistical analysis in law; law and economics; law and economics of migration; comparative law; socio-legal studies; legal pluralism; migration law; labor migration; migrant workers’ rights; human rights law; access to justice; Global South; Asia; Africa; Middle East; Latin America; Indonesia; open data; replication data.