Cuban Americans
Cuban Americans (Spanish: cubanoestadounidenses[8] or cubanoamericanos[9]) are Americans who immigrated from or are descended from immigrants from Cuba, regardless of racial or ethnic origin. As of 2023, Cuban Americans were the third largest Hispanic and Latino American group in the United States after Mexican Americans and Stateside Puerto Ricans.
Many metropolitan areas throughout the United States have significant Cuban American populations.[10] Florida (2,000,000 in 2023) has the highest concentration of Cuban Americans in the United States. Over 1,200,000 Cuban-Americans reside in Miami-Dade County, where they are the largest single ethnic group and constitute a majority of the population in many municipalities.[11][12][13] Florida is followed by Texas (140,482), California (100,619), New Jersey (97,842), and New York (74,523).[11]
Greater Miami has by far the highest concentration of Cuban Americans of any metropolitan area, followed by New York City; Tampa, Florida; Union County and North Hudson, New Jersey areas, particularly Union City, Elizabeth, West New York, Houston, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois.[10] With a population of 181,250, the New York metropolitan area's Cuban community is the largest outside Florida. Nearly 70% of all Cuban Americans live in Florida.[13]
Immigration policy[edit]
Before the 1980s, all refugees from Cuba were welcomed into the United States as political refugees. This changed in the 1990s so that only Cubans who reach U.S. soil are granted refuge under the "wet foot, dry foot policy". While representing a tightening of U.S. immigration policy, the wet foot, dry foot policy still affords Cubans a privileged position relative to other immigrants to the U.S. This privileged position is the source of a certain friction between Cuban Americans and other Latino citizens and residents in the United States, adding to the tension caused by the divergent foreign policy interests pursued by conservative Cuban Americans. Cuban immigration also continues with an allotted number of Cubans (20,000 per year) provided legal U.S. visas.
According to a U.S. Census 1970 report, Cuban Americans were present in all fifty states. But as later Census reports demonstrated, the majority of Cuban immigrants settled in Miami-Dade County. Emigration from Cuba began to slow down in the late 1990s. Meanwhile, second-generation Cuban Americans increasingly moved out of urban enclaves like Little Havana and settled in suburban areas like Westchester, while those urban areas came to be inhabited by immigrants from other Latin American nations.[36]
In late 1999, U.S. news media focused on the case of Elián González, the six-year-old Cuban boy caught in a custody battle between his relatives in Miami and his father in Cuba. The boy's mother died trying to bring him to the United States. On April 22, 2000, immigration enforcement agents took Elián González into custody. González was returned to Cuba to live with his father.
On January 12, 2017, President Barack Obama announced the immediate cessation of the wet feet, dry feet policy.[37] The Cuban government agreed to accept the return of Cuban nationals.[38] Beginning with the United States–Cuban Thaw in 2014, anticipation of the end of the policy had led to increased numbers of Cuban immigrants.[39]
*Albio Sires, Congressman from New Jersey's 13th Congressional District (2006–2013), and 8th Congressional District (since 2013)
General: