Maria Elena Case Study

MARIA ELENA Case Study

1

a. Summary of the case:

Maria Elena works as a cleaner in your home You find her quite pleasant but of late she seems to be restless so you decide to find out the reason for it and you are shocked Her story in short goes this way .Maria Elena is an illegal immigrant who lives in San Jose with her husband and 2 children in a run down apartment with two other couples. Maria and her husband Luis heard of how good everything was in the USA from a cousin and decide to leave Mexico, to give a better future for their children. So Luis entered USA illegally made enough money and then called for Elena .Using a false green card both of them work.

Elena’s mother is now in her death bed and Elena wants to visit her, but she fears that

If she goes to Mexico she will not able to return.

The moral issue is should you disclose the fact that you have an undocumented immigrant working in your home? The people involved are you, Elena and of course her family.

How to solve this problem of the illegal immigrant is foremost in your mind. You are caught between two issues humanitarian values and legal issues. You are also worried that you have not checked her social security before employing her.

2. You need to decide on what course of action you are going to take. You know that there is no way you can help Elena out. The source of the conflict itself is the residential status of your employee Elena.

The conflicting moral duties here are the laws of the land which are very harsh on immigrants and anyone found to be sheltering them are also penalized very harshly.

This issue does not have any resolutions or a solution. You could consider taking the advice of an immigration lawyer but you will be putting yourself under the scrutiny of the INS

Your resolution could be supportive on humane grounds only. You feel that Elena being an honest worker and wanting to give a good life to her children decided to enter USA illegally and on humanitarian grounds it is fine. But humanitarian values are never considered on legal terms. Legally it is wrong and if Elena and her husband are caught they will be languishing in prison. You , knowing her case well should now decide what to do.

3.

a. As Elena’s employer you have the recourse to law. You may decide whether to go to the officials or not.

b. You can terminate Elena’ s services and rest till the officials come to you for enquiries about Elena and thereafter live continuously under fear of enquiries or just say that the moment you knew about her status you terminated her services.

c. You also have the fear that if the officials came questioning they could ask you as to why this was not reported to them .Do you have an answer to it? If you were going to tell them you thought it was best to keep quiet and not report it you will have to face serious trouble with the INS.

d. You need to decide either to report the case or just keep quiet and pretend you never hired an immigrant worker and even if you had one you never knew about the historical details of your servant’s residential status.

e. Weighing all the options in favor of Elena and satisfying your moral responsibilities towards her you decide to pay her wages and terminate her services and take an ethical stand that you have not wronged her .At the same time you decide to brave out if questioned by the Officers that you never knew that she was an illegal immigrant because d. she had the necessary papers supporting her employment. I feel that morally it is wrong because laws of society have been laid down to protect the society and anyone tampering with these laws should be punished. But Elena had not harmed anyone so I feel I need to protect her .I also feel that she never knew that she would be an illegal immigrant otherwise she would have never taken the risk even for the sake of her children’s future.

The maxim it is better to live and die in freedom than in riches unknown.

4. Maria Elena works as a cleaner in your home You find her quite pleasant but of late she seems to be restless so you decide to find out the reason for it and you are shocked Her story in short goes this way .Maria Elena is an illegal immigrant who lives in San Jose with her husband and 2 children in a run down apartment with two other couples. Maria and her husband Luis heard of how good everything was in the USA from a cousin and decide to leave Mexico, to give a better future for their children. So Luis entered USA illegally made enough money