Cuban Migration

Throughout this semester, we have been learning about different types of ethnic groups. From all the groups we have been looking at, the one that stood out to me the most is Cubans. Cubans have been migrating to the United States for many years now. All immigrant groups that migrate to the United States have their unique reasoning of why they leave their home country. The island of Cuba was a decent place to live on, until the politics, economy, and freedom came crashing down causing waves of immigrants of Cuba to appear in the United States The push factors that contribute to female and male Cuban migrating to the United States are due to political, economic and freedom reasons. One of the main reasons why the immigrants left Cuba was due
The Cubans way of entering the United States was very dangerous and insecure. The first major wave of Cubans that were seen in the USA was from 1959-1960. Between these years there was a total of 250,000 that arrived to the United States. This group was called the “balsero” as Gonzalez calls them in his book. The “balseros” were supporters of ousted Batista government. However, soon there was a great number of educated, wealthy, and business owners whose land were confiscated by the new communist government in Cuba. This is the one unique reasoning that some Cubans have had to migrate to the USA. It’s rare to see high class citizens migrate to other countries, it's usually the lower class people that are looking for a better life. This comes to show that the communist government had a great effect on all the different classes in Cuba. Which is one of the unique migration patterns Cuba has had compared to other immigrants from other countries. The second major wave of Cuban immigrants that arrived to the U.S. was in the mid 1960’s to 1970’s. In this wave, we saw 300,000 undocumented Cubans arriving to the U.S. “The refuges of the 1960s and 1970s were largely from the upper and middle classes and brought with them enormous technical skills”. Later, Castro closed down all private properties. This made more Cubans rebel against the revolution; it was the low class, middle class, and skill workers
The first Cuban migration was a vast majority of unemployed tobacco workers who found jobs at new cigar factories. Vicente Ybor and Ignacio Haya, Spanish conquistadors, set up all the jobs for immigrant groups. Ybor and Haya purchased 40 acres of swampland in Florida, drained it and built a company town. Gonzalez describes in his book “Martinez Ybor promptly set up a steamship line between Havana, key west, and Tampa, assuring himself a steady supply of workers and turning his new town into the cigar capital of the country”. However, this also gave Cubans an easier way to enter the United States. This meant that a lot of Cubans didn't have to pass through immigration customs, making it easier to sneak into the U.S. During 1966, there was the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allowed Latino immigrant group to seek public assistance. Such as Medicare, food stamps, college loans, etc… Cuban refugees, however, found additional assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency. As Gonzalez describes, “Their view was not dampened by the defeat of the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and the capture of thousand exiles from the expeditionary force, known as Brigada 2506. By 1962, the CIA station at the University of Miami was the biggest in the world next to the agency’s of Virginia headquarters. The agency had so many Cubans on payroll that it became one of Miami's largest employers”. The pay of the CIA