Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South, a report released today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), surveys a mix of legal residents, undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens in the southeast U.S. and finds Latinos routinely subject to racial profiling, harassment by law enforcement and workplace abuse.

The degree to which workers documented in this report are "under siege and living in fear"--fear of the police, fear of the government and fear of criminals who prey on immigrants because of their vulnerability--is truly eye-opening. A disturbing 41 percent of the Latino immigrants interviewed in numerous Southern cities such as Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural southern Georgia and northern Alabama had experienced wage theft and were not paid for work performed. Thirty-two percent reported on-the-job injuries and the rate of deaths for Mexican workers in the South was one in 6,200--more than double the national average.

Laws to protect workers from abuse are feeble or nonexistent in most southern states, making it even more challenging for Latinos in the South suffering from wage theft, workplace discrimination or workplace injuries to seek justice and fair treatment.

"Today's report by the SPLC is a remarkable indictment of the prejudice, racial profiling and outright abuse faced by hardworking Hispanics, some of our country's most vulnerable workers," remarks SEIU Executive Vice President Eliseo Medina in a statement responding to the SPLC's report examining the abuse of Hispanic workers in the South. "We are judged by how we respond to discrimination of one neighbor by another, so today's report should serve as a wake-up call that these despicable acts will continue until we pass comprehensive immigration reform."