WASHINGTON: Washington, DC apartment on July 30, 2015 with her two-year-old son Carlos Chajon. Dalia Catalán’s daughter is 13 years old, but Catalán hasn’t seen her since leaving their home in Guatemala four years ago, when she and her husband came to Washington seeking work.Catalán, her husband and a two-year-old son, Carlos, live in a cramped basement apartment in Fort Totten. In a dimly lit bedroom, she pulls a picture of Dalia Belen off the dresser.
In it the girl, then eight, smiles confidently. Catalan, 30, has tucked away money bit by bit to build to the $7,000 she estimates it will cost to bring her daughter to join the family in the United States.She’s got about half of that saved, and with the $1 jump in the D.C. minimum wage that kicked in July 1 to $10.50 an hour the pile is growing $40 a week faster. At this faster rate, the teen could arrive in time to complete a high school education which Catalán believes will set her daughter on a better path.
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“I want her to study, and I want him to study.That’s my goal,” said Catalán in Spanish, through a translator, while wrangling Carlos. “As a mother, it’s everything for your kids. We don’t want our kids to go through what we went through.”A ballot initiative slated for next year’s election could help Catalán even more, if D.C. voters agree to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
The minimum raise is already on the rise in the District, where the floor went from $8.25 an hour in 2014 to $10.50 this year. It’s set to rise to $11.50 in 2016. Each $1 an hour climb adds $160 a month. While the small bumps of years past haven’t immediately transformed lives, earning three dollars more an hour could help someone afford rent in a neighbourhood with better schools, or save for a car that could provide access to a better job. That is, of course, if people can hold on to their minimum-wage jobs.
