Finally, economic motives have become as important as political ones during the latter phases of the exodus. Cuban communities are also notable in Madrid, Caracas, and Mexico City, but little has been published about them Geographic distribution of the cuban population in the United States, Number of Cubans.

Percent of Cubans. New Jersey. New York. Other states. Metropolitan area. Miami, Florida. Los Angeles, California. New York, New York. Tampa, Florida. Other areas. In Union City, Mariel refugees recently organized a rumba group at the Esquina Habanera restaurant Initially deterritorialized identities have taken hold across national boundaries through such settlement patterns.

Even where they share the same neighborhoods with other ethnic and racial groups — such as Nicaraguans in Sweetwater or Colombians in Queens —, Cubans tend to remain socially encapsulated in their own communities. Although residential segregation has many pernicious effects, it allows for the consolidation of Cuban barrios and the transformation of the urban landscape along transnational lines. It also makes possible some degree of political representation through concentration in certain electoral districts.

Since the s, Cubans in the United States have been increasingly empowered, partly as a result of their extreme clustering in south Florida and northern New Jersey. Another large Cuban enclave is found in Hialeah to the north of Dade County. In , sixteen percent of all Cubans in the county lived in the core of Little Havana and another 22 percent lived in Hialeah In Miami, Cuban-American culture thrives through numerous commercial Spanish-language signs and mass media, coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants, social clubs, political organizations, Catholic and Afro-Cuban yard shrines, artistic and musical activities, and the popular Calle Ocho Festival.

The shrine to Our Lady of Charity, the patron of Cuba, located in downtown Miami, embodies the diasporic identity of Cubans in exile In several essays, Portes has defined the enclave as a spatial concentration of ethnic enterprises and residences with a wide variety of economic activities and a large ethnic market that competes with the dominant economy According to this definition, the Cuban enclave of Miami has expanded dramatically over the past four decades.

In , Cubans owned 7 businesses in the Miami-Hialeah area, most of them in services, retail trade, and construction. By , Cubans owned 46 firms in the Miami metropolitan area. The city now has the second largest concentration of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States after Los Angeles By , more than half of all foreign-born Cubans in the United States had become U.

Once they naturalize and register to vote, Cuban-Americans tend to support the Republican Party and its conservative ideology. The exiles have recently organized as a pressure group to defend their interests in U.

As a result, their voice has been heard more clearly in local, state, and national arenas. During the s, three Cuban Americans were elected to the U. Here, too, the exiles have created a strong ethnic community that protects them from personal and social disorganization, although scholars have debated whether they have constituted an economic enclave such as the one in Miami.

For instance, the residential pattern of Cubans in West New York-Union City is much more dispersed than in Miami, and their occupational distribution is much more concentrated in blue-collar jobs in light manufacturing. Many were members of the lower class in Cuba, but others were professionals and managers who were forced to accept lower-status jobs in the United States.

However, initial downward occupational mobility has been a common experience for Cubans in the United States, especially those arriving in the early s. This allegiance to Cuban identity is partly due to the predominance of foreign-born immigrants, but also to the proliferation of Cuban organizations in the area.

In Milwaukee and Indiana-polis, for example, most exiles quickly adjusted to their new occupations and regained their former Cuban status On average, Cubans have higher incomes, educational levels, and occupational skills in states like Illinois and California than in Florida and New Jersey.

Unfortunately, little detailed information is available for Cuban communities outside the main centers of the diaspora In , over 57 Cubans lived in New York City alone. Since , many Cubans continued to move to New York and settled primarily in Washington Heights, in northwest Manhattan. They are often physically removed from other minorities because they tend to live in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, whereas the latter are largely confined to inner-city districts.

Even when they share the same neighborhoods, as in Washington Heights, Latinos usually cross national lines only in public places such as parks, schools, markets, and churches In the last three decades, Cubans have been moving out of New York and New Jersey and into Florida, as part of a resettlement pattern characteristic of the entire Cuban population in the United States.

But they deserve special attention because they display yet another adaptive strategy among Cubans in exile. The Cubans who moved to San Juan were even more over-representative of the propertied classes in their country of origin than those who moved to the U. For example, the Cuban-born population in Puerto Rico has a much larger share of upper-status workers, such as managers and professionals, than in the U. Cuban immigrants also have higher income and educational levels than the Puerto Rican-born population.

And they tend to live in upper-middle class neighborhoods within the San Juan metropolitan area United States. Puerto Rico. Managerial and professional. Technical, sales, and administrative support. Precision production, craft, and repair. Operators, fabricators, and laborers. Farming, forestry, and fishing. Prior to the Revolution, most of them were employed in the service sector of those urban centers, primarily as white-collar workers such as professionals and managers.

To a large extent, their economic adaptation depended on their ability to transfer past resources, both economic and social, to a new environment. For example, many early refugees established credit with U. Others formed commer-cial partnerships with friends and relatives who had moved to San Juan. Although many exiles suffered an initial loss of occupational status in Puerto Rico, most regained it within a single decade.

In brief, an important sector of the Cuban petty bourgeoisie was reconstituted in San Juan between and Like other middleman minorities, Cubans entered the middle and higher levels of commerce and in some cases virtually monopolized entire sectors of trade and services, such as small shops, bakeries, food retailing, the mass media, real estate, and advertising. They gained a special access to occupations that were either above the reach of the majority of the Puerto Rican population or beneath the dignity of the local elite, filling a status gap between dominant and subaltern classes.

Like other middleman minorities, Cubans in Puerto Rico are almost exclusively urban dwellers; unlike ethnic enclaves, they do not concentrate spatially in a single residential district. Nor do they focus on an ethnic market, like Cubans in Miami, but rather cater to the larger economy. Finally, in contrast to the situation in south Florida, Cuban enterprises in San Juan tend to employ a majority of non-Cubans, except in positions of trust.

While Cubans in Miami have established an economic enclave, those in West New York-Union City have developed a working-class community, and others have been absorbed into the primary labor market, Cubans in Puerto Rico have assumed a distinctive commercial and entre-preneurial role.

They have invested most of their capital and labor in retail trade and business services, primarily as managers, adminis-trators, sales and clerical workers.

Most work for themselves, for their compatriots, or for other foreigners. In sum, Cubans in San Juan fit the occupational profile of a middleman minority. Among other things, Cuba and Puerto Rico share a tropical insular geography, a common colonial history dominated by Spain, an Afro-Caribbean cultural heritage, a predominantly Catholic religion, and a Creole dialect of the Spanish language. In contrast, Cuban-Americans have faced a predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant establishment.

Hence, the ethnic boundaries between Americans and Cubans are much sharper than the ones dividing Cubans from Puerto Ricans. Such cultural differences such be explored further as contributing causes of the various paths followed by the Cuban diaspora In Miami, Cubans have created an institutionally complete community that provides an alternative to the secondary labor market as well as to mainstream American culture.

In West New York-Union City, they have formed a tight ethnic community that has facilitated their adjustment to the new society. Source : MPI tabulation of data from U. Census Bureau pooled ACS. Cuban immigrants are also highly concentrated by city. In the period, 63 percent of Cubans in the United States lived in the greater Miami metropolitan area. The Tampa metro area hosted the second-largest population and the greater New York metro area was a close third, with about 5 percent of all Cuban immigrants living in each area.

Table 1. Source: MPI tabulation of data from the U. Click here for an interactive map that highlights the metropolitan areas with the highest concentrations of immigrants.

Select Cuba from the dropdown menu. Cuban immigrants are much less likely to be proficient in English and speak English at home than the overall foreign-born population.

In FY , about 61 percent of Cubans ages 5 and over reported limited English proficiency, compared to 47 percent of the total foreign-born population. Approximately 7 percent of Cubans in the United States spoke only English at home, compared to 17 percent of all immigrants. Age, Education, and Employment. In FY , the median age of Cuban immigrants was 53, much higher than that of the overall foreign- and U. In large part, this is a result of the disproportionately high number of Cuban seniors.

Twenty-seven percent of Cubans were 65 or older, whereas this age group accounted for just 16 percent of the overall foreign- and native-born populations. Meanwhile, Cuban immigrants are more likely than the native born but less likely than the overall foreign-born population to be of working age ages 18 to 64; see Figure 4. Figure 4. Age Distribution of the U.

Population by Origin, Note : Numbers may not add up to as they are rounded to the nearest whole number. Source : MPI tabulation of data from the U. Census Bureau, ACS. Overall, Cuban immigrants have lower levels of educational attainment compared to the total foreign- and U. In FY , 54 percent of Cuban adults ages 25 and older had no more than a high school diploma or equivalent compared to 49 percent of all immigrants and 36 percent of all native-born adults.

Prior to the job dislocation caused by the COVID pandemic, Cuban immigrants participated in the labor force at a lower rate than the total foreign- and U. In , about 60 percent of Cubans ages 16 and over were in the civilian labor force, compared to 66 percent and 62 percent of all immigrants and the native born, respectively. Compared to immigrants overall, Cubans were less likely to be employed in management, business, science, and arts occupations see Figure 5.

Miami remains by all measures as the cultural heart of Cubans in America with over 1 million Cuban-American residents. Florida comes back into clear focus when ranking by percentage of population with Cuban ancestry, with only three places outside Florida cracking the top Las Vegas, Nevada; Moultrie, Georgia; and Dodge City, Kansas. These places all have small, but relatively significant numbers of Cuban-American residents, according to census data. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL 2,, 93, 3. Cuban-Americans in South Florida, long seen as a major source of Republican votes and holding monolithic, hard-line views toward the Cuban government, are changing.

The differences are especially pronounced between older Cubans who fled their country in the first two decades after the late dictator Fidel Castro took power and younger Cuban-Americans who were born outside the country. The divergence between people who left Cuba and came to the U. Also, there has been a shift, but not a reversal, of long-standing views about U. The poll, conducted in the weeks following the midterm election and released in January, was conducted among Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County, the epicenter of the Cuban-American community in the United States.

But there are significant differences among various demographic groups that make up the Cuban-American community. The lower identification with Republicans among younger voters shows up in the long-term trend of political affiliation in the Cuban-American community. In , Cuban-Americans were 69 percent Republican, 16 percent Democratic, and 14 percent no party affiliation.

Those shares remained steady until , the year President Barack Obama was elected. Starting in , Republican registration decreased to 53 percent, Democratic registration increased to 27 percent, and no party affiliation registration increased to 21 percent. The new, lower Republican share of registration remained roughly steady in the following 10 years.

But the share of registered Democrats slipped 8 percentage points in the last 10 years, while no party affiliation voters are up 5 points. Cuban-Americans provided major support for Republican candidates for governor and U. Senate , helping them win tight statewide races.

The overall election was much closer. Cubans who came to the U. Among Cuban-Americans born outside the island nation, the vote was 51 percent DeSantis and 48 percent Gillum. The splits were almost exactly the same in the U. Scott won the election with 50 percent of the vote to Many more cited the economy and jobs 47 percent , health care 29 percent , gun control 24 percent and immigration 20 percent. Grenier said the Cuban-American community is divided along demographic and ideological lines about dealing with Cuba.

There is broad agreement on the decades-long U. Overall support for the embargo has declined significantly over time. A far higher share — 78 percent — favored continuing the embargo in The question produces one of the biggest divides within the Cuban-American community, Grenier said.

Among those age 76 and older, 73 percent want it continued. Among people who came to the U. Views are mixed on expanding economic relations with the country, with 46 percent in favor, 22 percent wanting economic relations to stay the same, and 32 percent favoring a halt.

The most recent arrivals since and second- and third-generation Cuban-Americans support engagement with the island nation, the researchers reported. Diplomatic relations with the island nation, resumed by President Barack Obama near the end of his time in office, are supported by 63 percent of Cuban-Americans, with 37 percent opposed.

Diplomatic relations are supported by 77 percent of those not born in Cuba and 83 percent of those aged 18 to Among those 76 and older, 69 percent opposed U.

Interviews were conducted in Spanish and English, on land-lines and cellphones, between Nov. Migration Policy Institute. November 9, For decades, immigrants from Cuba have held a uniquely preferential position in U.

Cubans have been among the top ten immigrant populations in the United States since , and in were the seventh largest group. Nearly 1. Large-scale migration from Cuba began following the Cuban Revolution in , when Fidel Castro led a communist takeover of the island and ouster of the Fulgencio Batista regime.

The Cuban population in the United States grew almost six-fold within a decade, from 79, in to , in From the s onward, most Cubans who arrived on U.