Faced with the most up to date washing machine, the undocumented Rosa, newly arrived from Guatemala to Los Angeles, does what many resourceful Mayan women would: She handwashes clothes and lays them on the lawn to dry.1 Played for comic relief in the 1983 movie El Norte, this confrontation of the domestic worker with the machine represents how, presumably in the face of dirty wars in Latin America and rising labor force participation of mothers with small children in the United States, well-to-do households had it both ways: They purchased the latest appliances and relied upon the labor of immigrant women. Recent migrants appeared more tractable than the African Americans who historically had worked in other women's homes. New models superseded old Maytags, but domestic workers never became obsolete, despite the predictions of sociologists and the panicked laments of would-be employers.

面对最先进的洗衣机，刚从危地马拉来到洛杉矶的无证罗莎做了很多足智多谋的玛雅妇女会做的事：她用手洗衣服，然后把它们放在草坪上晾干。1在 1983 年的电影El Norte中扮演喜剧角色，家政工人与机器的这种对抗代表了，大概是面对拉丁美洲的肮脏战争和美国有小孩的母亲不断增加的劳动力参与率，嗯待办家庭有两种方式：他们购买了最新的电器和依靠移民妇女的劳动。与历史上曾在其他妇女家中工作的非洲裔美国人相比，新移民似乎更容易相处。新模式取代了旧的 Maytags，但家庭工人从未过时，尽管有社会学家的预测和未来雇主的恐慌哀叹。