> How is this related to the story? The story is about companies using children as workers in hazardous job. It’s illegal regardless of their documentation stat

> How is this related to the story? The story is about companies using children as workers in hazardous job. It’s illegal regardless of their documentation status. I don't know about this particular case, but I don't know of any large business that's purposefully hiring children, or people not legally able to work in the US. They're hiring immigrants who are providing false documents. If you're already using false documents and lying about your nationality, lying about your age isn't exactly a huge step. Why _not_ start working as soon as you can reasonably "pass" for the required age? > Iowa has proposed bill to to legalize exactly this. That seems like a different problem entirely. Establishing a culture where counterfeit or stolen identities are commonplace makes it difficult or impossible to ensure the other labor rules are followed even if the company wants to do so. If the company doesn't want to do so, then it's even more difficult to prove intent. "I had no idea that guy was 16. He said he was 19. Here's the driver's license have gave us! Here's his I-9! He said he was 19, how could we have known?" The above could have been said by a company who was honestly unaware of the deception, by one that doesn't care, or by one that is actively marketing to and even "importing" underage immigrant workers. > This is happening because companies don’t want to pay fair wage. This seems like a third issue still. In isolation, paying more would drive increased competition for the job; it would give people _more_ incentive to apply under false pretenses, not less. It's also not clear to me that there is a native workforce in these areas for these jobs, at any rate of pay. Those jobs are difficult to fill because they're seen as low status, not because they don't pay enough. Even today, Tyson provides some of the best-paying jobs in the area where I live. I don't see how increasing that gap even further would change anything.