Posted on Sat, Dec. 01, 2007
By INSTITUTE FOR CUBAN AND CUBAN-AMERICAN STUDIES
Below are excerpts from ''Coming to America: The New Cuban Migration
Crisis.'' a recent staff report from Institute for Cuban and
Cuban-American Studies of the University of Miami.
Mass migration has long been a favored policy in Havana, both as an
escape valve to relieve the periodic build-up of internal socioeconomic
pressures and as an aggressive foreign-policy tactic shrewdly employed
to embarrass and bring Washington to the negotiating table on Cuba's terms.
While the White House and Pentagon may no longer harbor conventional
concerns about the Cuban military as an adversary in a Cold War
struggle, the efficacy of mass migration as a foreign-policy weapon
seems to be substantiated by Washington's current worst nightmare when
it comes to Cuba: a mass influx of Cuban migrants overwhelming southern
Florida and leading to a humanitarian crisis of international
dimensions, on land or at sea.
Moreover, given the post-9/11 priorities about homeland security and the
contemporary division within U.S. society on the question of immigration
in general, the arrival of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Cubans
over a short period is a scenario that any U.S. administration would
like to avoid at all costs.
Yet, quietly but increasingly evident, a new mass migration out of
Castro's Cuba may be in progress. In the past two years, more Cubans
have found their way into the United States than during the Balsero
(rafter) crisis in the summer of 1994. At that time, upward of 38,000
men, women, and children were intercepted and rescued in the perilous
waters of the Florida Straits by the U.S. Coast Guard.
A decade later and largely without the high-seas drama of that crisis,
from approximately October 2005 through September 2007, nearly 77,000
Cubans are known to have reached U.S. territory -- more than twice the
total of the 1994 Balsero refugees.
U.S. Homeland Security data on new legal permanent residents by country
of origin reveals that emigration from the island into the U.S. has
reached levels not seen since the peak years of the late 1960s and early
1970s.
Authorities do little
In fact, more Cubans are now entering the United States -- legally and
otherwise -- than at any other time since the Freedom Flights of the
mid-1960s through the early 1970s. Since fiscal year 2000, upward of
191,000 Cubans have started new lives in the U.S., eclipsing the
combined migrations of [the Mariel and Balsero migrations of] 1980 and 1994.
Seemingly unnoticed by the media and policymakers alike, the U.S. is
witnessing a deluge of migration from Cuba. Moreover, the trend appears
to be escalating.
It is also evident that Cuban authorities are doing little to curb the
doubling of emigration since 2004.
Tacitly if not overtly, the Castro regime once again appears to be
turning to mass migration as its policy of choice to both deflate
mounting dissatisfaction at home and arguably set the stage for more
favorable negotiating terms in its relations with Washington.
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