History of US Immigrants

Even though Cuba is a little under 100 miles away from the United States, the relationship between the two countries has created an atmosphere full of tension and perpetual mistrust. When Fidel Castro decided to align Cuba with the U.S.S.R. and become a communist country, the United States of America was stunned and highly insulted. Because of their relationship, both countries have played a back and forth game of trying to outdo the other. This game and state of affairs in Cuba has created a large influx of Cuban immigrants looking for better opportunities and trying to escape poverty and persecution. This paper will be focusing on Cuban immigrants and examining different Cuban immigration laws, which allowed them to easily become United States citizens, including; the Cuban Adjustment Act, The Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1976 and the Wet Foot, Dry Foot Policy. It will also discuss whether the Cuban immigration laws are unfair to other foreign immigrants and whether the laws are relevant today. Finally, we will be considering the future and try to predict how the laws will change with the changing diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States and the imminent removal of the Embargo Act.

Central Americans are becoming more aware of their situation when immigrating to a new country. The problem isn’t Cubans but the immigration system itself is flawed. Allowing Cubans, a free

The history of Cuban immigration to the United States is vastly different than that of any other immigrant group. This difference have been codified into law and policy with the purpose of crippling Castro’s communist regime. Many immigrant groups and Americans have viewed the laws and policies as discriminatory as they clearly established preferential treatment, economic and education advantages of one immigrant group over another. After The U.S. government passed the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, exempting Cuban immigrants from many of the provision established by The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 it was not until the “wet-foot, dry-foot policy of 1995 that anything was done by the United States government to normalize the

Section 1, “emigration”, zones in on the three dominant groups of Cubans who immigrated to the U.S., including the millions of Cubans who uprooted their lives and left their country.

Looking around the U.S. everyone has a story on how they got to the country. Some people had it harder than others coming in. United States immigration has been around for a long time. It is something the country has struggled with in the past and present. For the United States, the country has struggled with how much privilege should the immigrants have or how to keep the country safe while letting people in? It is a problem that is still being worked out. Although there are numerous obstacles throughout history regarding this subject, immigrants are what shaped the country to what it is now. Cuba is a country that has had many obstacles in the immigration world.

Earlier this week President Obama made history by being the first American president in 90 years to visit Cuba. This visit will not only mark the monumental progress made in the American-Cuban relationship but it also began to shed light on the racial inequalities present in Cuba. While Americans haven’t been allowed to travel to Cuba and many embargos were placed on the country, it hasn’t been completely isolated from the western world. With almost all western cultures racial/ethnic inequalities are very much present throughout the society. Cuba is no exception. What makes Cuba special however, is the amount of effort put in to create a post-racial society. While after the revolution they tried incredibly hard to eradicate racial/ethnic inequality they “fell short” according to a recent NPR broadcast. With the Cubans relationship with the Americans growing, Cuban racial inequality is being slowly brought to the American spotlight.

In 1855 Spanish conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar began permanent settlement on the northern coast of Cuba with 300 men and their slaves. Five years after their arrival they had split our home country into seven sectors: Havana (La Habana), Puerto Príncipe, Santiago de Cuba, and Sancti Spíritus. Each had its own council that governed its affairs which resulted in a divided government and laid crucial behind the reasoning in which why did not have a proper representation in the voting of official affairs. However, Cuba became a key place for explorers o advance their knowledge of the land, thus, resulting in a vast amount different ethnic groups beginning to occupy not only our homeland but our workforce as well. “By 1570 most residents

Descriptive representation may not have a positive and significant impact on a politician’s agenda. This case study is on Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. He was born on May 28, 1971 in Miami, Florida. His parents were born in Cuba, which makes Senator Rubio a Cuban American. He makes a great case study to reflect on the opposite idea of descriptive representation in the political system. It is essential to talk about his parents’ history with immigration in order to understand why he does not correctly represent Latinos, especially Cuban-Americans or other minority groups that he should be representing. His parents immigrated from Cuba to the United States in 1956 before the rise of Fidel Castro, which was in January 1959. When Senator Rubio was born, neither of his parents were U.S. citizens.

In the movie Scarface you can see it talks about the many Cubans who are trying to become Cuban-Americans

During the Castro Era, Cuba has been an atheist state, Fidel Castro’s government has closed more than 400 Catholic schools. The Castro government has accused the school of spreading dangerous beliefs on the people. The Communist party removed the prohibition in 1991 on religious believers wanting to become members. After a year they have amended the constitution making the state as secular instead of Atheist. Furthermore, Cuba is ethnically European who are primarily Spanish. A quarter of the population is a group called “Meztizo”. This group is a combination of ethnic America Indian and European. African descent is 10% of the population whose ethnic variation came from numerous part of Africa. These group of people’s ancestors were brought to the Caribbean during the slave trade. The European Ancestry who are mostly white is 64.1%, the Mestizo and Mulatto mixed ancestry is 26.6% while the African Ancestry or the black people is 9.3%.

The culture and history of Cuba was influenced by Spain, the United States of America, Soviet Union and the sugar industries’ slave trade

Although Obama’s desire for better relations with Cuba is an important factor in the normalization of US-Cuban relations, the most important factor is a change in national opinion towards Cuba, a second image analysis. In 1998, a poll by ABC News indicated that 38% of Americans believed that diplomatic relations should be re-established with Cuba (Polling Report). A similar poll conducted in 2015 by USA Today/Gallup put that number at 61% (Polling Report). Any political decision is strongly influenced by public opinion. Obama’s decision to normalize US-Cuban relations is only possible because more people, particularly Cuban-Americans, are open to the idea of better relations between the two nations. Historically, many Cubans have moved to the US to flee persecution and oppression under the dictatorial Cuban government. Traditionally they have been the strongest opponents against US-Cuban rapprochement, but in recent decades this opposition has eased considerably. This may be because of a generational shift in the Cuban-American community, as second- and third- generation Cuban-Americans have become more tolerant and welcome towards greater openness between the two countries.

In this article, the author Nick mainly addresses the issue of the migration policy between America and Cuba. President Obama recently resumed the diplomatic relations with Cuba, which has led to a surging number of Cuban immigration, especially the illegal immigrants, to the United States, because many Cubans feel afraid that their long-standing immigration privileges as political refugees will no longer exist. Beginning in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act and the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy allows Cubans to stay in the United States if they touch U.S. soil, and offers permanent residency to Cubans one year after arrival in the United States (Nick. “Fear of”. The Washington Post. 2015). Cuban officials adamantly oppose to these policies, blaming that these policies encourage risky illegal migration, and cause a brain drain. However, the truth is that most new generation of Cuban immigrants are not real “refugees” any more; they actually resemble economic migrants, who come to America to work seasonally, and then return home. Most of the new Cubans arrive today also have obtained legal residency in a third country like Spain, which helps them come to America without U.S. visas, and then apply for asylum identified as Cuban. Thus, there is a debate about the purpose of these newer arrivals and some begin to advocate a “re-examination” of the Adjustment Act.

Even more interesting than the etymology of Cuba’s ethnic history is the implications of how transculturation played into the historical and social construction of power dynamics in Cuba. Ortiz states that throughout Cuban history, one culture was not only attempting to gain power and wealth for themselves, but systematically set up a culture that disenfranchised another population; this is seem most directly with the institution of slavery by the Spanish (Ortiz, 101). The power dynamic created by the institution of slavery can certainly be pointed to as a

The United States is distinct from other nations in many respects, many of which were derived from our status as a country of immigrants. Throughout our history, migrants have added their unique perspectives to our cultural “melting pot.” However, until the mid 1800s the US was largely homogenous, being almost entirely Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. It was only during the 19th century that immigrants began to arrive in droves, greatly increasing America’s population and diversity. This increased immigration was itself a reform as it completely changed the fabric of American society. However, from this migration also came governmental and societal immigration reform.