Latino Immigrants’ Wages, Education Lag, Studies Find

Latino immigrants arrive in this country with fewer educational and economic advantages than natives or other immigrants, and their predicament does not lessen as time goes on, according to a pair of new studies.

The reports released today by Rand Corp. researchers examine immigrants’ progress in the two crucial arenas of schools and the labor market and had troubling news about California’s largest group of newcomers.

“We have an economy that increasingly is asking for more educated people,” but Latino immigrants are moving in the opposite direction, said Georges Vernez, director of Rand’s Center for Research on Immigration Policy and one of the reports’ authors. “That is not a good sign for the future.”

The worrisome trends were especially true of immigrants from Mexico, who were found to fare the worst in school enrollment and in wage comparison with native-born Americans.

The studies by the Santa Monica think tank show the links between educational attainment and economic well-being and raise serious questions about the nation’s ability to respond to immigrant needs.

The education study, based on U.S. Census data and a nationwide survey of 21,000 10th- and 12th-graders, is the most comprehensive analysis so far of immigrants’ achievements from elementary school through college. It offers some good news.

It found, for instance, that immigrants in general are as likely as native-born Americans to graduate from high school and to aspire to and enroll in college. In fact, immigrants are more likely than their native counterparts to stick with college for four straight years, in large part because their immigrant parents have higher educational expectations than native parents do.

But Latino immigrants--principally from Mexico--were found to lag in educational attainment and aspirations.

In 1990, for example, only 74% of Mexican immigrants between the ages of 15 and 17 were in school, compared with 95% of natives and other immigrants. The problem, Vernez said, is not that they drop out but that they never “drop in,” or enroll in school in the first place.

Vernez and coauthor Allan Abrahamse say they do not know why this occurs but speculate that schooling patterns in Mexico may be an important factor. The average Mexican completes school through the seventh grade, they note, so an immigrant who arrives in the United States at age 15 or older has been out of school for at least two years already.

“They do not enroll in U.S. schools either by choice, because of inability to catch up with others their age, or by economic necessity,” Vernez and Abrahamse write in the study, called “How Immigrants Fare in U.S. Education.”

Moreover, Latinos’ educational goals decline dramatically the longer they live in the United States. This “aspiration gap” between Latino immigrants and American-born Latinos is three times greater than for any other ethnic group, the study found.

Vernez speculated that this “negative educational acculturation” may be tied to Latinos’ overall lack of economic progress, which may cause immigrants to have diminishing expectations for themselves and their children.

He said that encouraging more Latino parents to be involved in their children’s schooling and upgrading the education of the parents themselves could help to lift their educational status overall. But he stressed that the solutions cannot be provided by schools alone.

Like the education study, the Rand report on the labor market also found differences among immigrant groups. Immigrants from Japan, Korea and China start out with wages much lower than native workers, but catch up in seven to 12 years; while European newcomers arrive with earning power similar to that of natives and maintain that parity over their working lives, the study said.

But the wage gap persists or increases over time for Mexican immigrants, who make up the largest portion of California’s heterogeneous mix of new arrivals.

The labor market study, based on an analysis of U.S. census data, concludes that the wage differences are attributable in general to the Mexican immigrants’ lower levels of education and work skills.

But even for those Mexican immigrants with education or skill levels comparable to native workers, wages are lower and the progress toward parity slower, the study found.

“The differences do not necessarily imply that the higher-paid immigrants have better work habits or higher innate productivity,” the study by Vernez, Robert F. Schoeni and Kevin McCarthy said. “Nor do they necessarily imply that the lower-paid workers are discriminated against.”

The researchers said some of the reasons could be the differences between U.S. and foreign education, English-language skills, cultural differences, discrimination and the immigrants’ legal status.

Overall, the study finds that wage parity for immigrants has been falling steadily in the past 20 years because of lower education and skill levels.

For immigrants from Central America and Mexico, average wages were 25% to 40% lower than natives’ in 1970; by 1990, the differential had grown to 50%.

K.C. McAlpin, deputy director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, said the findings are significant and support efforts by groups such as his to curb illegal immigration.

“We are never going to be able to increase wages as long as the floodgates are open,” he said.

The databases used by Rand did not distinguish legal from illegal immigrants, however. Thus, Vernez insists, the studies cannot be used to draw conclusions about the impact of illegal immigration.

What should be stressed, he said, is that “no matter what we do on immigration, the problems are here. . . . If you deny [immigrants] education, then you might aggravate the problem in the long run--and certainly in the short run” for those who have already entered the country.