The Other Immigrants/ Las Otras Inmigrantes

Facts about working Latina women in the US

Immigrants in the United States make up about 15% of the labor force. Over half of the immigrants come from Latin America, the majority from Mexico . They are primarily concentrated in the service, construction, and manufacturing industries. Foreign born Latinos make up 5.8 % of the population but are 7.2 % of the labor force.

Women immigrants comprise approximately 5% of the total U.S. population. Approximately 18% of these women live below the poverty line. And, for households headed by single immigrant women, the percentage living below the poverty level is 31%. [i]
However, we know many of these women are working — women comprise 44% of the nation's low-wage immigrant work force and more and more women worldwide are migrating for work. According to the U.S. Census, in 2005, the Hispanic population had a poverty rate of 21.8% and 24.4% for Hispanic families with kids. Even more alarming, almost half of single, Hispanic mothers live in poverty – 45.2%. Many of these single mothers are working but often their work is under-paid, unreported, and without benefits.

Women are not only suffering low wages because of their immigration status but because they are women. In a July-August 2006 article of the Monthly Review, Harder Times: Undocumented Workers and the U.S. Informal Economy, Richard Vogel, cited a study by the Economic Roundtable focused on the informal economy of Los Angeles to emphasize the “super-exploitation” of undocumented immigrant women workers. The study indicates that the average wage for undocumented women workers amounted to only 46% of undocumented male workers' annual pay. And even in sectors in which women did the same tasks as men, such as building services, women earned only 50% of men's average wages.

Articles on Immigration

U.S. Immigration Debate Is a Road Well Traveled

Early-20th-Century Concerns Resurface

By Michael Powell

Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 8, 2006; Page A01

Beyond The Melting Pot
By William Henry III
Time Magazine

The Myth of the Melting Pot
Washington Post
Series of Articles February 1998