Latin American Immigration in the United States: Is There Wage Assimilation Across the Wage Distribution?

Immigration has been one of the main driving forces that have contributed to shape the United States as it is today. The current wave of immigration started in 1965 and has different characteristics to the previous inflows of immigrants1.In particular, the 1965 Immigration Act had an impact in shifting the national origin of U.S. immigrants mostly to Latin Americans and Asians, widening therefore the gap between natives and immigrants in terms of language and culture (Card, 2005). Since immigration from Latin America has constituted between 40 and 50 percent of total immigration in the current wave, and giventhat Latin Americans are relatively less skilled than U.S. natives and other immigrants, it is worth studying the wage differentials that potentially exist between natives and Latin American immigrants.