DAN NOWICKI

The Arizona Republic

MIAMI — At first glance, the Little Havana neighborhood here looks pretty much as it has for decades.

Older Cuban-Americans gather at Maximo Gomez Park for intense games of dominoes.

Cuban rhythms emanate from the Ball and Chain, a legendary jazz spot on Calle Ocho — Eighth Street — the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare.

The famous Versailles Restaurant, a landmark for the Cuban exile community, continues to serve its Cuban and Midnight sandwiches and Cuban coffee.

But a closer look finds demographic changes that also are transforming South Florida’s political landscape.

Many homes in the vicinity of Calle Ocho are owned not by Cubans, but immigrants from Central American countries. A barber is from Honduras. A window cleaner is from Ecuador. A passerby is from Puerto Rico.

The immigration debate in the GOP presidential race is a big part of the political discussion as battle for the Republican nomination shifts to Florida ahead of the state’s March 15 winner-take-all primary.

As expected, the more-recent arrivals from Central America and Mexico are receptive to the immigration reform message of Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, and alienated by the uncompromising anti-“amnesty” rhetoric of Republican front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

The attitudes of the Cuban-American electorate, once a solid Republican bloc, are changing, too.

The old-guard Cubans — who witnessed communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro seize power in 1959 and the Bay of Pigs invasion, or at least remember parents or grandparents talking about those events — largely remain in the GOP camp. But younger generations and newer immigrants from Cuba lean Democratic or independent.

According to the Pew Research Center, Democratic Hispanic voter registration in Miami-Dade County has increased 66 percent from 2006 to 2014. There were 265,000 Republican Hispanic voters in the county, where nearly half of Cuban-Americans live, compared with 218,000 Hispanic Democrats, Pew said. But the GOP number is not growing.

That could make it more difficult for Republicans seeking to win back the White House to put this crucial swing state back in the red column, after back-to-back losses to President Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012.

The Central Americans and Mexicans who have settled in the southern part of the state are watching GOP candidates’ promises of mass deportations and vows to undo the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of automatic citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.

Florida’s Cuban-Americans also are following the immigration debate, even though Cubans have enjoyed special status under U.S. immigration law since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966.

Under a 1995 change to the Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans who reach U.S. soil without papers generally are allowed in and then can relatively quickly attain permanent residency and then citizenship, a privilege not shared by other immigrants.

“Cubans realize they are getting a sweet deal ... so they don’t see themselves like other immigrants,” said Guillermo Grenier, a professor of sociology at Florida International University who since 1991 has conducted the school’s Cuba Poll, which tracks Cuban-American public opinion.

“But Miami truly is an immigrant city,” Grenier said. “You have a huge metropolitan area that’s heavily influenced by immigration and has been benefiting from that in all kinds of ways. They recognize that they’re not like Mexicans, but they certainly do not support the hard line on immigration.”

U.S./Cuba relationship

The thawing post-Cold War relationship between the United States and Cuba also is helping change the political dynamic.

President Barack Obama’s Dec. 17, 2014, announcement the United States would re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time since 1961 did not generate the backlash that would have been expected 20-30 years ago.

“As soon as Obama made the Dec. 17th announcement, I was out on Eighth Street trying to see what was going to happen here,” Grenier said. “And what happened was nothing. There were no pots and pans banging in the streets. No protests. There were like 15 people in front of one of the famous restaurants here, Versailles, but that was it.”

The tough-on-illegal-immigration positions of Trump, a celebrity billionaire and real-estate investor, and Cruz, a conservative first-term U.S. senator from Texas who is of Cuban descent, get a mixed reception from the Cuban community, as does Marco Rubio’s retreat from an immigration reform bill he helped negotiate in the U.S. Senate.

Despite hailing from Miami and a Cuban family, Rubio, a one-term U.S. senator from Florida, is turning off some younger Cuban-Americans with his support for continuing the Cold War-style isolation of Cuba, Grenier said.

Many in the Cuban community were more welcoming of the candidacy of another favorite son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, than Rubio, he said.

A recent stroll down Calle Ocho found several Cuban-Americans voicing support for Trump, who launched his candidacy last year criticizing illegal immigration from Mexico. He also has vowed to build a border wall, at Mexico’s expense, eliminate automatic citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil, and conduct mass deportations.

Raul Bravo, who has lived in Miami since 1980, likes Republicans and believes the party’s nominee will have an excellent shot at winning the general election over Clinton, the former secretary of State whom he expects to win the Democratic presidential nomination.

“I like Trump,” Bravo said at Maximo Gomez Park, a Little Havana landmark. “He’s got a big mouth, but I like him, because he talks clear.”

Bravo echoed a favorite Trump attack on his rival Cruz, saying Cruz has “got a problem” because he was born in Canada and may not be a natural-born citizen as required by the U.S. Constitution to be president.

Trump’s promise of a deportation force also doesn’t bother Bravo because it would target the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country without authorization from Mexico, Central American countries and elsewhere. “With Mexicans, you never know who’s coming from Mexico,” Bravo said.

Pepe Montes, a professional musician who came to the United States from Cuba in 2006, said he doesn’t grasp all of the distinctions between the major political parties but focuses instead on individual candidates.

He said he likes Trump.

“I have the tendency of liking some guys and others, don’t. I like Hillary, too,” Montes, a U.S. citizen, said in between afternoon sets at the Ball and Chain.

Trump appeal

One expert said it’s not surprising Trump appeals to some Cubans. In many ways Trump’s swaggering style is reminiscent of Latin American leaders and strongmen.

“The reason for Cubans liking Trump is because of the strong personality,” said Jaime Suchlicki, director of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. “Cubans do follow that.”

Trump has fewer fans among the broader Miami immigrant community.

Many of the more-recent immigrants are not likely to vote this year — some can’t vote — but they represent South Florida’s future and are acutely aware of the anti-immigrant rhetoric from Trump and other Republicans.

Gustavo Enrique Pacheco, an immigrant from Ecuador who cleans windows, has lived in Miami for 23 years. Like others in the immigrant community, he takes exception to Trump’s promise to undo the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

“What Trump say is the child was born here, it came from the illegal mother, I will take the citizenship,” Pacheco said. “But I’m not stupid. I’m reading the Constitution. The amendment said whatever child was born in the United States is going to be a citizen, period.”

He said the framers of the Constitution and the authors of the 14th Amendment were forward-looking men who wanted to create the best country they could and Trump’s claim he can easily revise it is not believable.

Younger immigrants or first-generation U.S. citizens said they are turned off by Trump. They are not necessarily tuned into U.S. politics yet, but for many their introduction to the GOP has been Trump’s controversial statements.

It is a situation national Republicans had hoped to avoid after studying their 2012 loss to Obama. The party recommended a sincere effort to engage Latinos and “embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.”

Gabriella Rocha, 21, is a U.S.-born citizen of Nicaraguan descent who said she feels cynical about government and is not inclined to vote.

Despite her ambivalence she is aware of Trump and his comments about Mexican illegal immigrants.

“You know, I go on Facebook and a lot of people here in Miami are Hispanics, and they’re just like, ‘Wow, that’s so ignorant,’ ” said Rocha, a barista at a coffee shop in Miami’s hip Wynwood arts district.

“And I think so, too,” she said.

Experts say Republicans may want to heed what younger Cuban and Central-American immigrants are saying about immigration — or at least avoid alienating them — as the older, pro-Republican generation starts to die off.

That is, if they want to make sure Florida remains in play.

Marlen Garcia, a marketing director for a Miami technology company, is a registered independent who has tended to vote Democratic in recent years. Her Cuban-American parents remain Republican, but she started to distance herself from her family’s politics and become more liberal when she attended the University of Massachusetts.

Garcia said she understands the antagonism toward communism felt by Cubans who “lost everything” in Castro’s revolution and had to rebuild in the United States. But the march of time is dimming those passions — and party loyalty — among younger Cuban-Americans.

“Their decisions were very emotional and my decisions are more logical and issues-based,” Garcia said of her parents’ generation. “I look at them and their history and it’s sort of like reading a book. Our generation, and generations since then, haven’t had to go through those type of things or live through a war. Your politics directly relate to that.”