Wages get boost from immigrants

This certainly contradicts the common belief! DP

California study shows native-born workers got higher pay because of immigration's impact.

By Susan Ferris / Sacramento Bee

Detnews.com: In a surprising new study with national implications, a University of California economist found that immigration boosted the average wages of the native-born workers in California by at least 4 percent between 1990 and 2004.

The boost in wages due to immigrants' impact on the workplace is across the board, but higher for those with at least a high school diploma, according to the detailed analysis of 44 years of U.S. Census data on immigration and the workplace.

Native-born high school dropouts, who are assumed to have lost ground to immigrants in the workplace, have not suffered any wage losses as a group because of immigration, according to the study, which was produced by the University of California-Davis associate professor Giovanni Peri for the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco.

"In fact, there has been a small uptick in their wages," Peri said of native-born high school dropouts, who account for about 8 percent of the state's native-born workers.

The gain in real wages for that group is less than 1 percent, Peri said, only 0.2 percent, "which is not much, but certainly not a negative."
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