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🌊 How Uber Profits off Migrants
Part three of our series on the business of mass migration
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Today we deliver part three of our three-part series on the billion-dollar migrant industry. In part one, we examined how migration has caused a boom in the hotel industry. In part two, we looked at how contractors and nonprofits have made their billions. In this final section, we tackle the food delivery industry – arguably the biggest beneficiary of all.
This report is part of our mission to cut through the Big News noise and spin on hot-button topics. They’ll tell you about either migrant crimes or heartbreaking mistreatment and deportations, depending on what their audiences or owners want.
Roca’s audience seeks the truth with no agenda, and that’s what we strive to give them.
–Max Frost, Roca editor
By Max Towey and Max Frost, Roca co-founders
A few weeks ago, we saw an African food delivery woman get hit by a car: An Uber swerved and cut her off. She tried to avoid it, slid into the car, landed on the ground, and got up holding an injured arm. The driver came running over, speaking rapidly.
She clearly didn’t understand, just staring at him as he spoke: “Hospital……insurance….hospital…police.”
“No police,” she said. “No, no, no.”
Still holding her arm, she got back on her bike and continued on to deliver her meal.
There are an estimated 65,000 food delivery workers – or deliveristas – in New York City. It’s impossible to know what percentage are illegal migrants but it’s undeniably a lot of them. They whizz up and down bike lanes, often in the wrong direction.
You may remember us writing about one of these migrants last year: A man we call Xavier, a 22-year-old Venezuelan who we met in Colombia on the edge of the deadly Darien Gap. At the time, he was preparing to bring his family through the jungle and up through Mexico to the United States.
Xavier and his family in Colombia
After six months, Xavier made it, reaching New York City with his girlfriend and her four year-old-son. He and Max Frost subsequently got pizza, over which Xavier shared the details of his harrowing journey to the US. He spoke of the gangs, cartels, and wild animals in the jungles – the stories almost every migrant to the US has.
But before he left, Xavier told Frost something we hadn’t heard before: That he and countless other migrants didn’t come for jobs in construction, restaurants, or agriculture – but to deliver food for Uber Eats.
This revelation sent us down a rabbit hole. Through it, we uncovered an underground delivery economy that is subsidizing our meals, changing the food industry, and boosting Big Tech’s profits as we speak.
The rest of this report is only for paid subscribers. You can become one – and fund our journalism – by starting a two-week free trial. Once you do, you can access all of our articles here!
Reader Replies
A lot of feedback to yesterday’s story on how nonprofits are taking advantage of migrant funding. We thank all of you for writing in, but there was one reply we wanted to highlight.
Rolando wrote:
It was no surprise to reach your story about New York non-profit waste.
I help non-profits establish themselves and raise money, and have been doing so most of my adult life. But now we are exposing the ugly underside of the nonprofit world, increasingly called the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. Nonprofits do a lot of good, but they aren’t supposed to be mere pass-through for government services. Too many times, these supposed nonprofits are just money-grubbing, incompetent opportunists who waste our tax dollars.
I sometimes get approached by nonprofits that are almost 100% supported by government grants. That was not the purpose of nonprofits and the supporting tax laws and exemptions. If they aren’t going to raise private funds, why don’t we hire efficient and effective for-profits to deliver services for a fee? We exist and believe in a capitalistic society where profit motives drive excellence. Why should social services be different? It should be all about helping those in need in the most effective manner possible.
The New York non-profits wasting our tax dollars is what happens when the government starts giving money away based on applications and processes. It creates a huge revenue stream that is then exploited and expanded. Giant salaries grow and grow as the money streams in. It becomes more about the non-profit organization than those they are supposed to serve. Checks and balances such as return on investment and impact, are lost in the background of lovely story-telling and connected individuals.
Nonprofits that don’t raise their own funds and who don’t manage to get community support should not exist. Maybe Musk will work on this next.
Today wraps up our New York City migrant report. Please reply to this email to let us know what you thought about it and what you’d like us to report on next. We’ll be back tomorrow with our next deep dive. See you then.
–Max and Max
RocaNews co-founders