Wages increasing for Latino workers

Immigrants are making better wages lately, without taking jobs away from American workers. DP

BY TONY CASTRO, MediaNewsGroup

dailydemocrat.com:The American Dream for Latinos and other immigrants is alive and well, even in the face of a troubled economy and historic levels of immigration that experts say mirrors the trend of a century ago, according to a study.

Foreign-born immigrants in recent years have made significant strides in wages over their counterparts of a decade earlier, while not taking away jobs from American workers, according to the study by the Pew Hispanic Center.

"Assimilation is real," said Rakesh Kochar, a researcher with the nonpartisan center based in Washington, D.C. "It works."

The proof, he said, is that the percentage of Latino immigrant workers at the lowest end of the wage scale fell by 6 percent from 1995 to 2005. And the proportion of Latino immigrants earning $8.50 to $16.20 an hour in that same period grew by about 5 percent.

The face of those findings was in workers like Juan Lopez Morales, 29, who lives in the San Fernando Valley community of Sun Valley, who has been working in construction for most of the five years since he emigrated from Mexico.

"I made just under $40,000 last year - the most I've ever made," he said.

While he sometimes goes weeks without work and labors 12 hours a day when he has a job, he's not complaining."

"I have a young family," he said. "My sacrifices are for them."

The Pew report was based primarily on a comparison of U.S. Census data across the country, with no specific geographic breakdowns.