The supposedly more upwardly mobile

While reading Arlene Davila's book one of the things that she briefly mentions, and that I was curious to hear more about is the stereotype of the upwardly mobile Cuban. I had never heard of this stereotype before I guess I am wondering what are its origins. As we all know stereotypes are often derived from truth that represents a few individuals. So when my friend was interviewed she mentioned that she thought there were differences among Latino groups in terms of who is more upwardly mobile and more motivated to succeed. The only reason that comes to mind from such opinions is what Davila mentions when the U.S. first began to have higher amounts of immigrants from Cuba, they were mainly middle-class citizens and were used to such status. Perhaps in this sense they may not have been much different from the U.S middle-class and this facilitated their integration into U.S. society. Needless to say that the key to success here in the U.S. is assimilation. Another reason that also has to do with assimilation is that approximately 81 percent of Cubans residing withing the United States identify themselves as white. I am not arguing against this because there are certainly a large number of Latinos that identify as white and technically there are Latinos who come from white European backgrounds or something similar. But this mostly likely plays a large role in their assimilation.