The working lives of people like Irania Sanchez, born in Nicaragua, represent New York's dirtiest secret. For six years Sanchez, 34, labored for low pay in a vital industry in Brooklyn: She made coffins. She worked in a small shop, alongside a half-dozen other employees, all of them, like herself, undocumented workers trying to get by. Her wages were minimal—no more than $5 an hour—for long shifts and no overtime. But it wasn't the pay or the hours that bothered her most. It was the problem of how to cope when her children, both of them born in this country and American citizens, needed... More >>>