Hispanic Americans rise in the United States
January 2013
The history of the United States houses many different cultures, ethnic groups and immigrants yet of these Hispanic Americans have thus far been known to be the quickest growing minority until recently. People who speak or are of Spanish, Latino or Hispanic decent are identified as Hispanic Americans in the United States being that they come generally from the Latin America region. Hispanics have experienced the difficulties of immigration to the United States, assimilation, conflict with other ethnic groups closely related to their own and many other problems with acceptance into the American culture. Culture differences have given way to some common misconceptions about Hispanic Americans that have led to discrimination issues due to heritage and language similarities clouding the true diversity of such a broad “Hispanic” label.
Hispanics have produced the largest wave of immigration mostly illegal, into the United States. From the 1850’s until just recently Hispanics have flooded into the US for various reasons but for most a better financial life but those opportunities have dwindled with the recent economy. “Just over half of all current Mexican immigrants are unauthorized, and some 58% of the estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. are Mexican” (Pew Research Center, 2012). “During the last decades of the 20th century, between 2000 and 2010, the U.S. Hispanic population grew by more than 40 percent to become the largest minority group in the United States. Hispanics now total 16 percent of the U.S. population, about one in six Americans is Hispanic” (Zack, 2012). Unfortunately the trends of immigration are maintaining the Hispanic/Latino population as foreign group. For instance in 1980, Hispanics that were born in America were responsible for 56 percent of the Hispanic children born in the US, therefore making them the third generation. By 2007, due to the mass Hispanic...