Background
Immigration in Florida is a relatively new phenomenon compared with the experiences of the country’s northeastern states. Few immigrants came to Florida during the wave of immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Rather, the impact of immigration in this state is measured over the past 50 years. From the 1959 revolution in Cuba until 1962, nearly 250,000 Cubans fled their country for America, according to the book "Cuban Exiles in Florida: Their Presence and Contributions." Another wave began in 1965, after Fidel Castro announced any Cuban wishing to leave could do so. Shortly after, Congress passed an immigration bill financing "Freedom Flights" to bring Cuban immigrants to the U.S. It also passed, in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act, granting Cubans permanent residency status after one year in the U.S. Between 1965 and the early 1970s, an estimated 300,000 Cubans were flown into the U.S., where many settled in Miami (view the Miami Herald's database on those who came here on Freedom Flights). In 1980, "freedom flotillas” carried 125,000 Cuban exiles across the ocean to America, many of them settling in Miami. That same year, an estimated 14,000 Haitians fled economic depression in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country in rickety boats bound for Florida.
According to the nonprofit Center for Immigration Studies, in the 1980s immigration became a major contributor to population growth in Florida. Between the 1980 and 1990 census counts, the Center reported in a 1995 study, "Florida had the nation's eighth-fastest rate of increase in its foreign-born population – 57 percent.” The study pointed to a dramatic rise in immigrants from Latin American and Caribbean countries between 1970 and 1990. "As a result,” the center reported, "the Hispanic population more than tripled (from 451,382 in 1970 to 1,574,143 in 1990).” At the turn of the 21st century, the construction boom brought immigrants from Central America, primarily from Mexico. Using data from 2008, the Pew Hispanic Center estimated that the total Hispanic population in Florida had grown to 3.8 million, roughly 21 percent of the total population. Of that total Hispanic population in 2008, 15 percent had emigrated from Mexico, Pew reported.
Not surprisingly, the increase in legal immigration was accompanied by an increase in illegal immigration. In the 1990s, Florida gained about 70,000 people through legal immigration each year, representing about 30 percent of the state's annual population growth, the Center for Immigration Studies reported. In 1992, the federal government's Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that about 322,000 unauthorized immigrants – 11 percent of the national unauthorized immigrant total at that time – resided in Florida. Nearly two decades later, an estimated 720,000 unauthorized immigrants live in Florida – roughly 6.5 percent of the national total.
As the nation's unauthorized population grew over the past decade, paralysis defined immigration policy in Washington. Democrats and Republicans alike sought changes to federal immigration laws, without success. A proposal by President George W. Bush that provided a legalization program for unauthorized immigrants died in 2007 after opponents protested. Congress passed a law calling for the construction of 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. A measure known as the DREAM Act , and backed by Democrats in late 2010, that allowed unauthorized immigrant students to earn legal status through education or military service, failed to pass the Senate. During this period, thousands of unauthorized immigrants were deported after federal raids on businesses. Under the Obama administration, federal agents are quietly examining workplace records for unauthorized immigrants, rather than carry out the high-profile raids on businesses that marked the Bush administration. Meanwhile, substantial federal legislation to resolve the status of unauthorized residents, and define border policy, remains unattainable in Washington.