An Information Service of the Cuba Transition Project Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies University of Miami

 

Staff Report

 

     Mass migration has long been a favored policy in Havana, used both as an escape valve to relieve the periodic build-up of internal socio-economic pressures (e.g., the so-called Balsero - rafter - exodus at the height of the post-Soviet Special Period in the early 1990s) and as an aggressive foreign policy tactic shrewdly employed to embarass 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.

     The human and economic consequences, especially for U.S. state and local governments, would be sufficient to warrant genuine concern. Moreover, given the post-September 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 of time 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 crisis in the summer of 1994. At that time, upwards 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. As part of the Clinton administration's 1995 migration accords with the Cuban government, they were ultimately resettled in the U.S. after infamous months at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. A decade later and largely without the high-seas drama of that crisis, as of fiscal years (FY) 2006 and 2007 (approximately from October 2005 through September 2007) nearly 77,000 Cubans are known to have reached American territory, or more than twice the total of the 1994 Balsero refugees (see Table I).

     Under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, virtually all Cuban nationals who land upon U.S. soil are legally entitled to remain in the country and to seek permanent resident status (i.e., a "Green Card") upon fulfilling 366 days of continuous physical presence in the United States. On the basis of U.S. Homeland Security data on new legal permanent residents by country of origin each fiscal year rather than the more typically consulted U.S. Coast Guard statistics on intercepted Cuban migrants, Table II 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.

     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. Contrary to conventional opinion about the historic magnitude of the Balsero exodus (~40,000) and the Mariel Boatlift (~125,000), since FY 2000 upwards of 191,000 Cubans have started new lives in the U.S., eclipsing the combined migrations of 1980 and 1994. At the current average annual inflow (since FY 2005) of approximately 38,000 new migrants per year, the U.S. will have received 267,000 new Cuban immigrants by the end of FY 2009. Should the projections hold, the present era will surpass both the 1960s and 1970s (see Table II) in terms of total Cuban migration to the U.S. in any decade since the triumph of the revolution in 1959.

     If we include total post-Soviet immigration from the island (FY 1990 through projected FY 2009), more than 426,000 Cubans will have resettled in the United States, a figure that rivals the 458,000-strong generation of historic (pre-1980) exiles.

     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 rather than declining. Cubans now account for 3.6 percent (45,614 in FY 2006) of all new permanent residents, up from 2.1 percent in FY 2004 (20,488), and now behind only Mexico, China, the Philippines, and India.[1] Considering that Cubans have every incentive to acquire permanent resident status as soon as possible, the Homeland Security data essentially captures the size of annual Cuban migration flows into the U.S. Moreover, the data in Tables I and II are lagging indicators since Homeland Security statistics refer to the number of Green Cards issued in a given year. Assuming a one to two-year processing time for permanent resident applications, the FY 2006 data (FY 2007 data are preliminary figures based on known arrivals, [2]) more likely represent those Cubans who physically arrived in the U.S. sometime between 2004 and 2005.

     Consequently, it is probable that the slow pace of post-Special Period socio-economic recovery and a lack of hope, especially among younger Cubans, for substantive political and economic change under Raul Castro will be reflected in even higher statistics in the coming years. It is also evident that Cuban authorities are doing little to curb the doubling of emigration since FY 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.

 Table I

 Table II

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Notes

1. See Kelley Jefferys, "U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2006," Annual Flow Report (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, March 2007), p. 3.

2. Anthony Boadle, "Illegal flow of Cubans to U.S. on the rise," Reuters, Havana, October 1 , 2007.