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Hispanic American Diversity

Hispanic American Diversity

Scott Merritt

Phoenix University

Ever since 1970, United States has seen a considerable number of immigrants because of economic chaos and civil wars in Latin America. A clash between the government of El Salvador and leftist guerrillas in 1980 brought about 500,000 immigrants to United States. This group of people primarily settled in California, Florida, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C. A civil war in Nicaragua in 1980 drove an estimated 800,000 Nicaraguan immigrants to the United States. Historic records show that Dominican immigrations happened even in the 1800s. Early 1960s saw a surge of Dominican immigrants to the United States due to economic issues and political turmoil back in Dominican Republic. They have settled in areas of United States where there is already a strong Hispanic presence. Haverstraw, New York has the highest percentage (26.95) of people who claim Dominican ancestry. Added to this, a large number of immigrants from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and South America are seen concentrated in the Northeast. These different immigration waves caused the creation of a number of diverse Hispanic American communities with each having a unique identity in the United States. The primary language spoken in households of this diverse group is still Spanish. This group is not represented well in politics, and this is partly attributed to their low political awareness. This lack of political representation has in-turn been one of the reasons why they are discriminated, ignored, underserved and underemployed. While Dominicans favor the Democrats, most Colombians favor Republicans and conservative political ideologies. School drop out rate for this group is on the higher side, with a low 17.2% of their people over 25 years becoming college graduates. In the economic sense they are amongst the poorest Hispanics.

Cuban Americans consist of the third chief assembly of Hispanics within the United States. Most Cuban...