Immigrants' work risky

Another story about immigrants taking jobs most citizens won't take. DP

Homicide is main cause of on-the-job deaths for foreign-born staff

By Stephen Franklin and Darnell Little, Chicago Tribune

Ohio.com: CHICAGO - Blood seeped from his hands and face. His skin burned from the knife that slashed at him from the cab's backseat. He thought he was dying just like his friend whose throat was cut by a robber in his cab late one night.

Grabbing the long, serrated blade of the attacker's knife shredded his hand but saved his life.

"If I didn't hold the knife, I think he would have cut my throat,'' Mahmood Ishaque said as he recalls the attack that took place more than a year and half ago but seems as frighteningly fresh as yesterday to him.

The No. 1 cause of death on the job for foreign-born workers is homicide, and most victims are clerks at gasoline stations and food stores or cabdrivers like Mahmood Ishaque. They are immigrants doing dangerous work that others won't.

A Chicago Tribune analysis shows that in 2005, when foreign-born workers made up 15 percent of the nation's work force, 188 were murdered on the job; that's a third of the 564 workplace homicide victims, the highest ratio since the government began keeping track in 1992. Last year, U.S. grocery stores recorded 76 murders, more than any other industry, government figures show.

Much of this loss of life can be avoided with measures that are both well-known and not costly, experts say. But protecting cabdrivers and store clerks hasn't been as big a priority as saving lives on the factory floor, they add.
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