Fifteen years ago, 43-year old Jose Gomez, fearing for his life, fled civil warfare in his native El Salvador and found asylum in the United States. Gomez works as a steward at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where he and fellow workers have been on strike since June, fighting wage and benefit cuts. But because he doesn’t have permanent residence status, he hasn’t been able to visit his family in El Salvador or arrange to bring them here. He lives and works in limbo. Gomez’s problems are common among the 18 million foreign-born workers in the United States, about one-eighth...