Quotes from John Iceland

Another wave of Cuban immigrants entered in 1980 as part of the Mariel Boatlift, and this group was both racially and socioeconomically very mixed. In that year 803,000 Cubans, or about 8 percent of Cuba's population, lived in the United States. Cubans overwhelmingly settled in Miami, and many found success as entrepreneurs and small-business owners.9

In 1970 just 5 percent of the U.S. population was Hispanic. By 2013 this had risen to 17 percent, and population projections suggest that perhaps 28 percent of the population might be Hispanic in 2050, though, as discussed in chapter 2, the actual percentage will depend on how data are collected in the future and changing patterns of self-identification, especially among people of mixed-ethnic origins.

A significant majority of the Hispanic population is of Mexican origin (63.0 percent), with the next largest groups being Puerto Ricans (9.2 percent), Cubans (3.5), Salvadorans (3.3), and Dominicans (2.8).