The Spanish and their descendants in Cuba (talking about the white ones like Bob, not darker skinned Afro Cubans and indigenous) were probably brought into the "whites club" before the Italians

i think that's got to do with them being rich, cuban emigres and the rancheros of northern mexico after guadalupe hidalgo had very little trouble adjusting to yankee society, but the discriminated-against whites all came in waves of overwhelmingly poor migrants from europe. if a couple million dirt-poor spanish peasants had ever shown up in boston it'd be a different story, but most spanish immigration obviously went to latin america instead