Outlaws and Refuges

English 1301

September 26, 2012

Outlaws and Refuges

On one side we have the neglected Mexicans and in the other the loved Cubans. The Mexicans were mistreated and taken advantage of by the Anglo settlers; while the Cubans were granted shelter and financial aid from the U.S. via the orders of President Clinton. There was also a huge difference in the type of immigrants from both countries. The Cuban immigrants from the 1960’s and the 1970’s were mostly wealthy well educated. The majority of Mexican immigrants make the choice to try better luck in the US for financial needs and a better life.

The Mexican Diaspora is at the core of our country’s Latino heritage. Not only are two of every three Latinos in the United States of Mexican origin, but only Mexicans can claim to be both early settlers on U.S. soil and the largest group of new arrivals(Gonzalez 96). How can Mexicans not have disgust towards early Anglo settlers on how they mistreated our antecessors? Or better yet how can they forgive their antecessors on being so naïve? Now they have to come back crawling through the scorching desserts, drowning on the terrible Rio Bravo to come back to what used to belong to them just for a better life. They didn’t understand their right and those of their grandparents. Anybody could tell them, ‘your grandfather lost his land, sold it’ and they couldn’t prove otherwise (Gonzalez 100). Even when they are able to come back to the U.S. they have to live on the hide from immigration officers and search for a way to become legal residents.

“Few immigrant groups have commenced their economic adaptation to American life from a position of such relative advantage” wrote sociologist Alejandro Portes. The U.S. government provided a shelf full of government assistance programs under the 1966 Cuban adjustment Act, programs that Mexicans, Puerto