Dallas' housing boom has created jobs for a third of recent arrivals

09:43 AM CST on Wednesday, December 7, 2005

By DIANNE SOLÍS / The Dallas Morning News

Dallas is a magnet for Mexican construction workers, with about a third of the city's new Mexican immigrants now working in an industry that helped create a blue-collar middle class in the U.S.

A picture of where Mexican immigrants work in the U.S. emerged Tuesday from one of the broadest surveys ever of this fast-rising segment of the population – a good share of which is in the U.S. illegally.

The report from the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan Washington research group, was based on surveys of more than 4,800 people at Mexican consulates in Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Fresno, Calif., and Raleigh, N.C.

The report also found that Mexican unemployment isn't a primary motivation for the decisions of Mexicans to migrate north of the Rio Grande. At play are U.S. labor demands and poor Mexican wages, said Roberto Suro, the Pew Hispanic Center director.

"There is one very clear finding here," Mr. Suro said. "It is not a flow of people without jobs."

The findings come as debate intensifies across the nation and on Capitol Hill on illegal immigration. Many of the bills have recommended guest worker programs.

But on Tuesday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., introduced legislation focused on an employer crackdown. And as evidence of the nation's mood swing on immigration, the bill is expected to be debated on the House floor next week – before lawmakers return to their home districts for the holidays.

Under the sweeping immigration reforms of 1986, it became illegal for employers to knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The new bill calls for, among other items, increased civil and criminal penalties and an employment eligibility verification system for bosses to check Social Security numbers and alien identification numbers.

There are nearly 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.; about 6.3 million come from Mexico, Pew estimates.

Mr. Suro said that while Mexicans come for the chance to at least double their wages, emotional factors also drive the decision to move to the U.S.

"We are now several decades into a substantial migration," he said.

Mexican families with many relatives already in the U.S. hit the migration trail, he said, noting that there's a "momentum behind it rather than just a balance-sheet calculation."

The survey found that construction is the dominant industry for migrant workers in Dallas, a market ranked among the top areas in home building for the last decade.

Nearly a third of new arrivals – migrants in the U.S. for two years or less – work in construction in Dallas, the study said.

None of the other six cities where Pew surveyed had that high a concentration of new arrivals working in construction. But among all migrants – those here for any length of time – Raleigh had the largest concentration of Mexican migrants in construction, at 38 percent. Dallas and Atlanta followed.

The Dallas metropolitan area outpaced Raleigh, Atlanta and the nation as a whole in new-housing permits through October 2005, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The Dallas area saw a 7 percent rise in new-housing permits, compared with a national increase of 5 percent.

Tuesday, in Old East Dallas, at a popular day labor site, Mexican construction workers were plentiful. Among them was Juan Diaz, a 27-year-old who recently gave up his annual trek across the border.

"I am not going back anymore," Mr. Diaz said. "I now have my wife here and my children."

Interviews by Pew researchers were done at the consulates, where Mexicans gathered to obtain the government-issued ID card known as a matrícula consular.

The vast majority of those who obtain the newly improved identification card have no documents to prove they are in the U.S. legally, so researchers concluded the majority were in the U.S. illegally.

The study also found that migrants in Dallas and Atlanta were the best off, with workers in both markets receiving more than the median wage of $300 a week.

Overall, migrants made the most money in the construction field. About 17 percent were making $500 or more a week. Domestic workers made the least, with 82 percent earning under $300.

As the U.S. Census and other studies have underscored, immigration into North Texas is largely a new migration – unlike other regions of the nation.

About 46 percent of the migrants in Dallas arrived here within the last five years, Pew found.

The report also noted that from 2000 to 2004, one in four workers propelling U.S. labor force growth was undocumented, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Michelle Mittelstadt in Washington and Isabel Rojas of Al Día in Dallas contributed to this report.

E-mail dsolis@dallasnews.com