Author: Poblete Tamargo LLP

By Lourdes Acevedo

(Washington, DC) Commonly referred to as the “Gateway to the Americas,” South Florida has long served as a major business and immigration hub for individuals and companies. With its close proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, and its highly diverse ethnic population, it is no surprise that South Florida has become the newest region of choice by high-tech entrepreneurs from all over the world.

On March 25, 2014, the Ewing Marion Kaufman Foundation released the findings of its national study, “Lessons for U.S. Metro Areas: Characteristics and Clustering of High-Tech Immigrant Entrepreneurs.” Though the data to this study is limited to 2000-2011, it highlights the significant changes South Florida’s technology sector has undergone since 2000.

The Kaufman Foundation study found that for high tech entrepreneurs distributed throughout the top twenty-five metropolitan statistical areas, Miami and Fort Lauderdale not only have the first and third highest rates of immigrant high-tech entrepreneurs, respectively, but the areas also proved to have the fastest growth rates of foreign-born high-tech entrepreneurs.

The report also explains why South Florida remains an attractive market for high-tech entrepreneurs from all over the world. A positive correlation was discovered between a metropolitan city having a larger share of the foreign-born population and a higher ethnic diversity as key factors in bringing in high-tech business. With a population of 51.2% foreign-born persons, of which 64.3% Hispanics in Miami Dade County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and an existing culture of entrepreneurship, it is easy to understand why South Florida is leading the immigrant high-tech entrepreneurial wave.

This high tech upsurge coincides with a growing area of law-data privacy. With the rapid development of technology, companies are able to obtain a lot more personal information about its customers; this presents new legal opportunities and challenges. As the major Target breach earlier this year has shown, failure to protect consumer’s data will result in damage to a company’s reputation, loss of consumer trust and decreased revenue. This is in addition to any regulatory penalties that will be incurred as well.

When asked about the ongoing changes in data privacy law, Arthur Freyre, an attorney with Poblete Tamargo, stated, “For companies, this wealth of new information allows companies to better serve their clients. The challenge is for companies to protect that sensitive data from hackers. It is critical for companies to take the appropriate measures to protect themselves against anything that threatens customer data and trust.”

Please contact us should you have any questions or inquiries regarding data privacy policy, U.S. immigration laws, as well as potentially related business advisory services, for your matter.

The Boston Globe: “Cuba, you owe us $7 billion”: ” … What’s often forgotten, though, is that the embargo was actually triggered by something concrete: an enormous pile of American assets that Castro seized in the process of nationalizing the Cuban economy. Some of these assets were the vacation homes and bank accounts of wealthy individuals. But the lion’s share of the confiscated property—originally valued at $1.8 billion, which at 6 percent simple interest translates to nearly $7 billion today—was sugar factories, mines, oil refineries, and other business operations belonging to American corporations, among them the Coca-Cola Co., Exxon, and the First National Bank of Boston. A 2009 article in the Inter-American Law Review described Castro’s nationalization of US assets as the “largest uncompensated taking of American property by a foreign government in history.”

Read the entire story here.

PT Law’s Senior Policy Advisor, Dr. Andy Gomez, was interviewed and quoted in a recent Miami Herald story on U.S. democracy promotion programs:

“USAID may have some excellent programs around the world, but the problem here is that anything dealing with Cuba becomes politicized and in my opinion there was very little oversight of it,” said Andy Gomez, a retired University of Miami Cuba scholar and now senior policy adviser for Washington law firm Poblete Tamargo. The Associated Press reported last week that USAID established the network called ZunZuneo — Cuban slang for the sound of a hummingbird — as a text-messaging service that began gearing up in late 2009 and reached at least 40,000 subscribers before funding ran out in September 2012. USAID, however, says the number was around 68,000 at its peak.

Read more here.

(Miami, Florida) Dr. Andy Gomez, a senior policy advisor with Poblete Tamargo, will be interviewed tomorrow at 7:30AM (EST)/6:30 AM (Jamaica EST) on Jamaica Speaks.

Dr. Gomez will discuss Cuba’s recently announced foreign investment law with Professor Trevor Munroe and Gladstone Wilson.

You can listen live by following this link. 

Earlier this week the Associated Press revealed details of a USAID people-to-people program to counter Cuban government Internet censorship. Part of the program included a Twitter-like technology for the Cuban people called ZunZuneo.

While the program is legal under s.109 of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, among other laws and executive orders, details of the Cuban-Twitter were probably unlawfully leaked to the media. These leaks endanger the lives of individuals in Cuba who helped set up or used the network.

“The Cuban government will do everything possible to discredit (blogger) Yoani (Sanchez) and other opposition leaders inside Cuba, using this kind of information,” Andy Gomez, a Cuba expert and senior policy adviser with the law firm Poblete Tamargo” told the Associated Press.

According to several news stories, Congressional hearings are scheduled for next week.

Read the entire article here.