Guatemalans tops at filling area roof jobs
Daniel González
A decade ago, Mexican immigrants dominated the roofing trade here. They toiled at one of the lowest rungs of the construction industry ladder doing the arduous, dangerous work shunned by most Americans, especially in Arizona where triple-digit summer temperatures make roofing especially hellish.
But as earlier waves of Mexican immigrants become more established, they, too, are thumbing their noses at roofing jobs. When they move on to better paying, less dangerous construction work, their old jobs are going to newly arrived immigrants from poor Central American countries.
"Day by day, many Guatemalans are coming," said Alberto Menchu, 27, one of the Guatemalan workers.
Menchu said he paid a smuggler $2,000 in 1994 to help him get from Guatemala to Phoenix, where he landed a job as a roofer within three days. In Guatemala, Menchu earned as little as $8 a week cutting sugar cane. Now he earns nearly twice that amount in a single hour of roofing work.
"If it wasn't for immigrant workers, the industry would be severely curtailed," said Dan Cohen, executive director of the Arizona Roofing Contractors Association.
