Hispanic people have always played an important part in history of the United States. As early as the 1500's, Spanish explorers and colonists settled on the Caribbean islands that are today known as Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. In 1898, the United States won the Spanish-American war and took the island of Puerto Rico to be its colony, which eventually led to wide spread to Puerto Rican immigration to the United States in the next century. After the revolution of 1959, Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro's new communist government were welcomed into the United States. Refugees fleeing both poverty and political oppression have came to the United States from "Nicaragua", " El Salvador", "Guatemala", the Dominican republic and other Spanish speaking countries of central and South America.
             Many Hispanic immigrants came to the united states illegally, at the time when laws severely restricted immigration. These immigrants were severely limited in the types of jobs they could get and the business opportunities that were open to them, since they had to hide their identities from authorities in order to avoid being deported. The first Hispanic people in the United States came from Mexico. The United States and Mexico argued over the territorial boundaries where finally fixed, United States land included many formerly Mexican citizens. Also poverty and the promise of employment migration drove Mexicans from Mexico to California and the southwest, where they worked for extremely low wages as farm laborers. Because they were so poor, they could be made to work for lower wages than native born white workers and were used by employers to drive wages d...