Anybody who is remotely aware of the contemporary demographics of Miami, Fla., is also aware that, beginning in the 1960s with the significant emigration numbers from Cuba and continuing since the 1980s with Cuban and Haitian migrations, it has evolved into a culturally mixed setting. Indeed, according to the US Census Bureau, as of 2003 fully 50 percent of all persons living in the Miami-Dade County area were reportedly not born in the United States. Furthermore, some 70 percent of people more than five years old in the area spoke some language other than English at home (USCB, 2005).
Within that context, which plainly suggests significant ethnic and nation-of-origin diversity, it is readily observable that there are smaller communities that are relatively ethnically, linguistically, and racially homogeneous. In part that can be attributed to the fact that Census Bureau overviews do not necessarily capture the fact that some of the non-English-speaking residents of Miami-Dade County are illegal immigrants. In that connection, since the 1960s, Cubans fleeing the Castro regime who enter the US without documentation have historically been given preferential treatment with regard to legalizing their immigration status, while persons fleeing from other regimes in the Caribbean, notably Haitian and Mexican illegals, have not gotten the same treatment (Robinson, 2000). Controversy surrounds the issue, and race consciousness appears to be a distinct feature of experience in the area. The US Census Bureau sums it up this way in the 2003 edition of its American Community Survey, which is based on the 2000 census but which is updated online with some regularity:
For people reporting one race, 73 percent were White alone; 21 percent were Black or African American; less than 0.5 percent were American Indian and Alaska Native; 1 percent were Asian; less than 0.5 percent were Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and 4 percent were Some ...