Why Is the Cuban Immigrant Story in the US So Different from Others [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Cold War politics led to special policies and domestic political power

August 1, 2022
Joel Brown

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Since the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, Cubans have enjoyed a special status that the United States government does not bestow upon any other immigrant group. Presidents and Congress have given them different rules and benefits. In part as a result, they have become one of the most prosperous and politically powerful immigrant subcultures in the country.“It has given them special rights to emigrate to the United States. It has given them special entitlements once they are in the United States,” says Susan Eckstein,Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies professor of international relations and sociology. Eckstein’s new book, Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America (Cambridge University Press, 2022), examines how and why immigrants from Havana were treated differently and how it has affected them—and us.

“Most immigrants from Cuba have arrived without authorization, they come without visas,” she says. “But Cubans have been able to come by any means—in a boat, by land, as tourists, whatever—and then have been able to have their status adjusted, so they are lawful immigrants with a path to citizenship.”After the Revolution, Cubans were on the receiving end of the largest refugee program in US history, Eckstein says, including college tuition, job training and placement, and much more.

“It was a refugee program, which was I guess a way of getting around giving other immigrant groups the same entitlements,” Eckstein says. “But the only criteria that Cubans needed to get access to this generous program was to have come to the United States after January, 1959.… This was a way of getting around immigration law.”

Although Castro’s rebels began as self-styled freedom fighters overthrowing the dictatorial and corrupt Batista regime, their government moved quickly to a communist system. Many Cubans, especially the moneyed class, fled over the next few years amid confiscation of property and nationalization of businesses. And the US government, unhappy with having a communist regime just 90 miles from Florida, was happy to welcome them. It was all part of a Cold War strategy that also included the ongoing economic embargo (Cubans call it the “blockade”), as well as 1960s assassination attempts on Castro and the doomed Bay of Pigs “Invasion.”

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“It has really become the Cuban Americans almost dictating US-Cuba policy as opposed to presidents, for Cold War reasons, wanting to use the Cubans for their own political agenda,” she says.

More:
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/cuban-immigrant-story-in-us-is-different-from-others/