Today's Inquirer (click here to read more) reports that the owners of the Marathon Grill chain have agreed to pay nearly $21,000 in back wages to a group of former employees, half of them immigrants, to settle a Department of Labor complaint against the company.

Every day, thousands of immigrant workers go to service jobs in the Philly area. Most of them work for employers that are ethical and comply fully with the law. But not all of them are that lucky.

Find out why by clicking "read more" below.

Some of them work for employers who like to hire immigrants because they think they are more vulnerable or easier to exploit than native-born workers. Some of them go out of their way to hire undocumented immigrants, because they know that those workers are less likely to complain to the government about unfair treatment. And some of those workers suffer ridiculous abuses at the hands of their employers--they don't get paid, or they don't get paid the minimum wage or overtime; they get injured and aren't covered by workers' comp; they get killed on the job, and no one feels the need to compensate their loved ones.

I was happy to read the Inquirer's coverage of this story today, not just because I'm glad that these 12 workers will be receiving their lost wages, but because the mere fact that this story was reported in the mainstream media could prevent another employer from trying to exploit their workers, knowing that the DoL is looking at these kinds of cases.

And that's not just important to immigrant workers--it's important to all of us. As long as immigrant workers are perceived by employers to be more vulnerable than native-born workers, they can-and will-be used to drive down standards in the industries where they work. By treating the complaints of all the Marathon Grill workers as the same, the Department of Labor has sent a clear message to immigrant workers-and their employers-that it’s safe for them to come forward.

Kati Sipp works for Pennsylvania’s largest health care workers’ union, SEIU District 1199P. She is the co-chair of the Philadelphia Immigrant Workers’ Rights Committee, a committee of the Pennsylvania Immigration & Citizenship Coalition. The views expressed in this post are hers alone.