For years, Miami has been a paradise of sun, beach, party and shopping. But the most Latino capital in the United States not only attracts tourists, but also professional and affluent Latinos looking to protect their investments and a quiet life.
While thousands of poor immigrants try to cross into the United States through the southern border of Mexico, others, much wealthier, arrive in Miami without attracting so much media attention and without so much controversy.
Armed with work permits, with more education than Latinos who arrive on foot across the border, with high expectations and desire to advance, many of them arrive in Miami and buy houses with swimming pools, gardens and access to good schools.
As Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump vows to build a wall along the border with Mexico, there is little talk of migrants arriving in Miami. A metropolis of 2.5 million inhabitants, in which almost 70% of the population is Hispanic.
Spanish is spoken almost everywhere and most assume it without seeing it as a problem.
Bridge between cultures
Juan Pablo Restrepo is from Colombia. He lives with his wife and son near the beach. He works as a music curator at Mood Media, a company that supplies music that is heard in stores throughout the country.
“Miami is very attractive for Latin Americans. They can be in the United States, with all its advantages, but at the same time maintain their cultural roots,” Restrepo tells BBC Mundo.
“It’s also a bridge between both cultures, Anglo and Hispanic. If you go to other places in the country, you feel the racial and cultural tensions a lot more.”
Restrepo is part of the Latino diaspora that has turned Miami into the U.S. city with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents, about 51% of the population, according to Guillermo Grenier, Professor of Sociology at Florida International University.
“Cubans began arriving (after the Revolution) in 1959 and after that Latinos were arriving from different countries,” says Grenier.
In recent years, about 100,000 middle-income Latin Americans have followed Cubans from Colombia, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, among others, the sociologist tells BBC Mundo.
“If you are an entrepreneur from Latin America you can come to Miami, because you have an audience, a market. You can make five calls in Spanish and establish the infrastructure for your business,” he adds, stressing that about 25% of businesses in the state of Florida are owned by Latin American immigrants.
Different position
Grenier sees that Hispanics in Miami occupy a different position in the power structure compared to what happens in other parts of the United States.
“In Los Angeles, when you hear Spanish, it’s usually the language of waiters or gardeners when they mow lawns in the garden. In Miami the people who own the restaurant and the lawn are the ones who speak Spanish.”
Those who oppose immigration say that this is an obstacle to the place of reception, but on the contrary, in Miami many see in that a business opportunity.
Mercedes Guinot, a real estate agent, sells many homes to wealthy Latino immigrants.
He estimates that 80 percent of his clients are from Latin America who pay an average of $450,000 for three- or four-bedroom homes with gardens and pools.
“They usually pay cash,” he says before meeting with a prospective client in Weston, a Miami neighborhood with manicured gardens and lush landscaping that is the home now of many Venezuelans, so it is known as “Westonzuela”.
Argentines, Venezuelans and Brazilians, among others, have found in Miami a refuge for their investments given the instability of their countries.
And the arrival of these well-to-do migrants creates job opportunities for the local population.
Jarrod Judson was born in upstate Florida. He has a company that provides cleaning and maintenance services to houses in the residential neighborhoods of Miami.
When he moved to this city a few months ago, he decided to baptize his company as “Servicios El Gringo”, because that is how many of his clients and friends know him in this city of overwhelming Latino majority.
Many of those who hire him speak only Spanish, a language he does not know. “It doesn’t bother me that so many speak Spanish here in Miami,” he tells BBC Mundo.
So has Miami completely avoided the immigration controversy so alive elsewhere?
In any case, this was not the case in the not so distant past. Local residents still remember the tensions that followed the 1980 referendum declaring English as the city’s official language, in place until the early 1990s.
They then sought (in vain) to contain the great influence of Spanish.
Latin Domain
Over the years, a large number of Anglo-Saxon residents, Uncomfortable with the demographic tsunami that turned a sleepy southern city into a large Latino metropolis, they moved once the balance of power in Miami clearly tilted to the Hispanic community’s side.
Only about 15% of residents of Miami Dade County, where Miami is located, are non-Hispanic whites, according to Grenier.
But no one should think that life is simple for Latinos who immigrate to Miami.
So says Kathy Riaño-López, a Colombian-born immigration attorney.
“The first immigration case I won was my own,” Riaño told the BBC. The lawyer came to the United States in 2004 seeking asylum for political persecution in her native country.
Despite being a graduate of prestigious universities in Colombia and Spain, she remembers that it took years to get her degrees recognized in the United States.
The other side
About 70% of his current clients are from Venezuela, people fleeing the chaos of the country.
“Many are willing to come to this country and do jobs they would never consider doing at home,” he said.
It is expected that in the near future the attraction for A city that represents the aspirations of wealthy Latin Americans for a life of security, stability and comfort.
And Miami itself is keen to embrace the cultural diversity that comes with them, in addition to the economic prosperity they have helped create in their host city.
