"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.

[5] The Sandinista revolution that started in the mid-1970s and the Contra war that followed brought the first large waves of Nicaraguan refugees into the U.S.[8] As a result of the de-privatization reforms under the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN)'s rule (from 1979 to 1990), the first wave of approximately 120,000 Nicaraguans left Nicaragua and entered the United States.

[9] This phase of upper-class arrivals included exiled dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and his family, who owned homes in Miami and were among the richest people in Florida (ibid).

Another major wave of Nicaraguans to the United States, consisting primarily of blue collar workers, peaked in the dramatic exodus of early 1989.

Many of these Nicaraguan immigrants settled in poor and deteriorated sections of Miami, where struggling Cubans who came during the Mariel boatlift exodus of 1980 had previously lived.

They celebrate the patron saints of the Roman Catholic Church with festivals and processions, which also provide a context for artistic and cultural expressions of the local identity.

[2] Nicaragua is one of the most traditionalist countries in the Americas and so the majority of Nicaraguans define themselves as socially conservatives regardless of party affiliations or place of residence within the United States.

The Amigos de las Americas program set in motion by John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s promoted the sisterhood between states of the U.S. and third world countries.

Employment and Student exchange programs in the past were the main reason for the first Nicaraguan to arrive and settle in that Midwest State.