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I'm not so sure Cuban Americans are any more or less assimilated than other Hispanic Americans that arrived before or during the same period as them. If they are more assimilated than later immigrants, that has to do with time. What I think is this:
Which political spectrum in the US is more concerned with assimilation? Conservatives.
Above all other Hispanic groups (and basically all other groups in general), where do Cuban Americans tend to fall on the political spectrum? Conservative.
Historically? The Spaniards. They came to this country like every other immigrant group. No special privileges. No language advantages. No nothing. They came, they worked, they learned English, they assimilated.
The Spaniards? Puleez. Half of the Cubans in Miami who arrived in the earlier waves are the sons, daughters and grandchildren of Spanish immigrants who migrated to Cuba in the 1920's, primarily Galicians and Asturians. So, they are ethnically Spanish, so what the hell are you talking about?
I am a first generation Italian-American, probably a couple of decades older than you are. I never had to "try" to be an average American - I just was.
Puleez Ray1945, spare us your lame response. Italian Americans are hardly what I would call "average Americans," and I'm sure that you were far from being an "Average American" [try as your might]. The average Italian American in places like "Jersey Shore" and Brooklyn, NYC [which is the epitome of Italianness in the Northeast] is about as far from New England WASP, Midwest farmboy or a Southern Redneck as the EAST is from the WEST.
As far as Cubans are concerned, many Cubans are very assimilated, so assimilated in fact that most people don't even know that they are Cubans. Ryan Lochte, the Gold metal swimmer and ALL AMERICAN BOY from the Olympics 2012, is a classic example. Bob Vila, host of "This Old House," was another example. Look up people like Amy Rodriguez. She's on the USA women's soccer team, another "ALL AMERICAN GIRL, who is of Cuban Ancestry. Ray1945, you don't know what you're talking about. Sweep around your own back door and stop attacking Cubans.
Seems to me that Cubans are more in tune with 'traditional' American virtues than other Hispanics. There seems to me more of a focus on education and achievement, as opposed to Mexcians or Puerto Ricans for example. I've found that Cubans will focus on long term achievement for their kids, where as Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in America see their kids more as a family contributor who can supplement household income as they reach teen years. Are the Cubans at the top of the Hispanic pecking order?
No. Obviously the most American hispanics are those whose roots in the USA go way back -- the Tejanos whose ancestors fought at the Alamo for example, or the New Mexico hispanics who have lived in New Mexico even before it was the USA.
There are "hispanics" who didn't just recently arrive, some families lived in the USA before 1910, 1900 -- obviously they are the most American.
I've lived in NYC (Puerto Ricans), south Florida (Cubans) and now Texas (Mexicans).
Among the three I would go with Cubans. And I've lived in each of those areas for at least a decade.
"Spanish-Americans" are usually defined as immigrants to the US from the nation of Spain itself, and not through any intermediary countries.
Did I say that they were Spanish Americans? I said that they are of Spanish stock, direct descendants of Galicians and Asturians in response to Ray1945's lame attempt negatively compare Cubans to Spaniards. That said, the Spanish government considers the grandchildren of Spanish immigrants to Cuba as part of the Spanish diaspora and even recognizes their rights to Spanish citizenship.
A few years after the Mexican-American war Mexico lost or sold those states (by a corrupt president) to the U.S. As more Anglos moved into those areas and took land and gained power the Spaniards were forced to assimilate. It didn't happen like other Hispanics that moved to the U.S., the spaniards were already here (the part of the U.S. that used to be Mexico), which is why I said their circumstances were a bit different.
I think it's little different than that -- for example the Tejanos and Texans were actually a more similar people with one another -- a type of people was moving out west and a type of people was moving north into lands that others would consider uninhabitable. Federalists from Mexico didn't like the Centralist type of government of their nation and so obviously were more impressed with Texas. The ranchers and cattle people of Mexico and of the USA kind of assimilated together but both had to assimilate to a land and life that was far from their capitol cities and national governments.
Same thing with many of the Spaniards who had a more pioneer spirit than you find in people in Mexico City and the comfortable towns of the interior -- they were willing to face the hardships of the remote regions, were drawn to a place far from the central.
And yes their circumstances are quite a bit different, they were actually part of the pioneer experience.
I think Mexicans are the most assimilated because they have numbers on their side. There are probably more Mexicans that speak English fluently in the US than the entire population of Cubans in the US.
Sorry, but numbers on their side mean........they don't have to assimilate. This is an article that's trying to put a happy face on some rather stark statistics. The author of the study even manages to blame.........us racist whites.....still......
Mexican Immigrants Prove Slow to Fit In
Why Mexicans assimilate at rates lower than newcomers from other parts of the world
By Bret Schulte
May 15, 2008
Perhaps most telling: Of the approximately 1,500 surveyed in two distinct immigrant communities—Los Angeles and San Antonio—most identified as "Mexican" or "Mexican-American" even into the fourth generation. It's that kind of cultural signifier that has so many white Americans concerned that this is a group not interested in becoming American.
Ortiz says her interviews demonstrated that that was not the case. She argues that the above factors, especially segregated neighborhoods, "all probably lead to a stronger sense of identification of being Mexican or Mexican-American," she says. "The fact that they are maintaining a sense of Mexicanness is to some extent a reaction to how American society doesn't fully accept Mexican-origin folks." The continued ethnic identification is similar to that of other groups that have felt oppression from the majority, African-Americans and American Indians among them. Rubén Rumbaut, a professor of sociology at the University of California-Irvine, notes that "the people who have been most ostracized, stigmatized, and racialized...assert that now with pride, and they dig in their heels, and they become that which they had been labeled pejoratively."Rumbaut, a leading researcher in immigrant studies, argues that assimilation is like a tango. Each party has to avoid stepping on the other's toes. "Assimilation, unlike acculturation...includes how they are welcomed or not by native groups," he says. In one study that included members of 77 nationalities, Rumbaut asked participants if they agreed that the United States was the best country in the world. Those most likely to agree were Vietnamese and Cubans or those who had benefited from refugee assistance. The least likely were Haitians, Jamaicans, and others with black skin "who bore the brunt of racial discrimination in their adoptive society," Rumbaut says. "The moral of the story is you reap what you sow. I see assimilation as a relationship and not some robotlike process of adaptation to a new environment that takes place only on the part of the assimilated."......
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