And the nod was unanimous. Isabel's mother, America, went across the street to make Cuban coffee. Outside the island, the city where the most Cubans live is Miami, the county's largest in population and size. Hialeah has an estimated 207,000 residents to Miami's 364,000, according to updated figures of the Bureau of Economic Research at the University of Florida. But Hialeah has a much greater concentration of Cubans.
Demographers believe the same difference in percentage holds true today.
Many of them settled in Little Havana, worked their way into new prosperity, moved to up to the fledgling suburbs and graduated children who became professionals. In a packed city with a vacancy rate hovering at 1 percent, Fernandez-Kelly found clean and neatly kept houses, even in the most modest neighborhoods. Many Americans find this terribly objectionable because the informal economy means taxes are not paid. But she discovered that Cuban kids in Hialeah don't drop out of school from disillusionment with the educational system. They leave school because of the opportunities awaiting them in the Cuban-owned businesses in the city.