Nicaraguan Americans

History of Nicaraguan Immigration to the United States

Nicaraguans who migrated to the United States during the last 30 years came initially in reaction to the political upheavals in Nicaragua that started with the Sandinista Revolution in the late 1970s, when the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) seized the home of dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and established socialist rule. As a result, the first wave of approximately 120,000 Nicaraguans entered the United States. They consisted of upper-class landholders, industrialists, and the exiled dictator and his family, who were among the South Florida elite.

The second wave, which began during the early 1980s, was made up of professionals and white-collar workers emigrating because of the civil war, led by U.S.-backed opponents (“contras”) of the FSLN, and because of economic strife in Nicaragua. Another large wave of Nicaraguans entering the United States, consisting primarily of laborers, peaked in a large exodus in early 1989. Many in this third wave of immigrants settled in poor and deteriorating sections of Miami, where Mariel Cuban refugees had previously lived.

The influx of Nicaraguans between 1988 and 1990 had significantly diminished by 1991, with the defeat of the Sandinistas in the 1989 elections, and then rose again in 1993 because of extremely poor economic conditions in the homeland. Since then, people from Nicaragua have been coming to the United States steadily, seeking better opportunities for their children. Indeed, Nicaragua struggles economically. Figures in 2005 from the World Bank show a per capita income of $830, the lowest in the Western Hemisphere except for Haiti.

Socioeconomic Factors and Barriers

Compared with the total U.S. population, Nicaraguan immigrants have disproportionately low levels of education and employment. Of the 155,375 Nicaraguan foreign-born individuals between the ages of 15 and 64, 37% did not graduate from high school. This is slightly more than the percentage for the overall foreign-born population (36%) and significantly more than the percentage of U.S. citizens of the same age who have not completed high school. The median income of Nicaraguan Americans is $19,000 (about $5,000 lower than for the total immigrant population). Their jobs are predominately labor-intensive.

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