Given the lack of employment, increasingly Mexican immigrants are taking on risky jobs. Many of these workers are unfamiliar with the most basic ways of how to protect themselves on the work site.

The main cause for health problems is the lack of training for jobs that on the surface appear to be easy to Mexican immigrants, who search for work in fields for which they don’t know basic rules of safety.

Although a carpenter’s job might appear easy, it requires a lot of training. José Dorante, an immigrant, found this out when he injured a nerve in his right hand while using a tool.

“I’m still receiving treatment, but my hand falls asleep on occasion. I didn’t know how to use the tools well and I hurt myself with one of them,” said the 34-year-old man.

Accidents at work are one of the most frequent causes of injury for Mexican immigrants who are sometimes only familiar with a few types of occupations, but are not aware of risk factors involving new work.

Agustino Zapata, a native of Tlaquepaque, Mexico, said that after working for years as a welder, he realized how little attention he paid to protecting his eyes.

“Either because I was a kid, immature or innocent, I remember that sometimes I took off my glasses with the soldering iron heated up and that hurts the eyes.”

Today Zapata is no longer a welder. He got a new job that doesn’t carry the risks of his old one. “I’m an assistant to a contractor, I no longer weld, and I’m alive.”

In his own experience, Zapata, 56, expressed that hunger drives many immigrants to take on jobs they don’t know much about but could have long-term consequences on their health.

“Many people fall, they injure themselves, and are worse off because they don’t get training. But for people who want you to work it's not important to them whether you're trained or not. They want results.”