, first Latina to serve in the U.S. Cabinet.
Nicaraguans have immigrated to the United States in small groups since the early 1900s, but their presence was especially felt over the last three decades of the 20th century. The Nicaraguan community is mainly concentrated in three major urban areas:
Metropolitan Miami,
Greater Los Angeles, and
San Francisco Bay Area. A more affluent group of Nicaraguan Americans reside in the
New York metropolitan area. According to Immigration and Naturalization Service figures, 23,261 Nicaraguans were admitted as permanent residents between 1976 and 1985; 75,264 were admitted between 1986 and 1993; and 94,582 between 1994 and 2002, with a total of 193,107 Nicaraguan immigrants being granted legal status since 1976. Most Central Americans were denied refugee asylum status during the 1980s. While the
U.S. Refugee Act of 1980 wanted to favor U.S. foreign policy to help political asylum seekers it mostly favored only
Eastern Bloc or Communist nations or countries in the
Middle East. "Asylum decisions with respect to Salvadorans and Guatemalans reflected U.S. foreign policy, which supported their governments" such as
U.S. involvement in regime change in Latin America. Many Nicaraguans were rejected despite the
Reagan Administration’s stance on helping political refugees. “During the early 1980s, approximately 10 percent of Nicaraguan applicants, compared to 2 to 3 percent of those from El Salvador and Guatemala, received asylum.” Over 62 percent of the total documented immigration from 1979 to 1988 occurred after 1984. According to the
1990 U.S. census 168,659 of the total 202,658 documented Nicaraguans in the U.S. were born in Nicaragua. In 1992 approximately 10–12% of the Nicaraguan population had
emigrated. These emigrants tended to be disproportionately of working age, better educated, and more often
white-collar workers than non-migrants. In addition, emigrants were more likely to come from larger premigration households and higher
income households. ==Motives for Immigration==