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from Gainesville, Florida five Lie Presents Conversation from the University of Florida, a discussion of social, political, scientific and religious issues of the day. Your host is Dr Michael V. Gannon professor of history and ethics, an assistant dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.

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Mm hmm. Hello and welcome to another conversation. My guest this time is Dr Robert Bach, who is visiting sociologist from the State University of New York in Binghamton, a specialist in Latin American studies with a particular interest. Bobbin migration. What's the difference between migration and immigration?

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Major difference is whether a person crosses an international boundary. Um, typically, uh, immigration is a term reserved for people that leave one country, not the United States, and enter the United States. That's immigration. Migration is anyone that moves in the United States across the county boundary, um, any distance at all on this particular program, I'd like for us to talk about the Cuban immigrants in the Mario Boat Lift, which took place between April and September 1980.

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I understand. A total of 125,000 plus Cubans entered the United States at that time uh, let's review the circumstances of their arrival in this country, uh, some of the fears about the constituencies of that group and then, thirdly, what has happened to them in retrospect four years now.

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What has happened to the Marie Alito's Let's go back to 1980. What happened and why did it occur that we had so many coming in that a large number in, uh, that year of the President Carter administration? Well, the history is quite complex, but the series of events begins in early April, with several people running buses or climbing the fences of approving embassy seeking to declare political asylum.

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This was taking place over several weeks, and at one point a bus crashed through the gates in Havana at the proving embassy in Havana, and a Cuban guard which protects the embassy was killed. At that point, the Cuban government withdrew the guards from the embassy, which precipitated a flow of close to 10 or 11,000 people into the embassy.

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Quite a spontaneous invasion of the embassy. Um, now what happened is that this was an international incident. It was Cuban citizens in a foreign embassy ground. They immediately thought other countries, Peru, Costa Rica, um, to resettle the people outside of Havana to seek political asylum and to and to get it.

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Um, of course. This was an international incident on the Cuban government protested and did not regard these people as legitimate refugees or asylum seekers. They were, um, for the most part, um, criminals invading. Um, but who were they? Can we select out that particular group and identify them?

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Uh, first of all, are they genuine seekers after liberty? Or are this Are they members of this so called hardened criminal element that we've heard so much about? And do they actually end up on the boat lift? Okay, that's that's the controversy. Um, as it turns out, the group that entered the proving embassy in the very beginning of the flow, Um, by the statistics we have on them in the United States.

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So after they arrived in the United States, they appear to be, um, what we would consider middle class, um, there from the middle of Cuban society. They're highly educated relative to the people that come afterwards, in the flow and relative to those waves of Cubans who came before, Um, they many of them had family in the United States already, uh, there were a higher proportion of professionals in that group than later came in the flow.

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So this is a higher status social status group that entered the embassy initially. Um, and so the the flow changes in character Later on, in April, April 19th and the 20th of April, Uh, the Cubans decide to open the harbor and redirect the flow so they have these 10 11,000 people in approving embassy.

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Who are they who? They are slowly distributing to other countries, and they're they're greatly embarrassed. The Cuban government is greatly embarrassed by the international press, because when the people in approving embassy arrive in Costa Rica and particularly Costa Rica and Peru, they get off the planes with, uh, flags waving Liberty, Libertad, Liberty and Freedom.

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And so the Cuban government is embarrassed. Um, and it's a It's a major international embarrassment to them. As a reaction the Cuban government opens, they announced that the corridor to the north, which is their phrase for taking the guard away from the harbor, is open, meaning anybody that wants to leave can go.

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But those people leaving could theoretically be arrested as soon as they left the Peruvian compound, right? Well, that's another controversy. The Cuban government issued safe conduct passes most of the people in the embassy because many of them climb the fences and they were there without anything.

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Um, and here you get a controversy. Again. The Cubans did deliver. The Cuban government did deliver food and, um, water and 11,000 people in an embassy. Um, that's very small. It's not a very, um, large complex. So they were very crowded. They were on the roof, They were in the trees, etcetera.

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So it wasn't very good conditions. The Cubans did offer substantial aid. And if you look at the figures, it's with food and sanitation. They built latrines at the same time. With that many people, the conditions were still quite bad. Latrines backed up, and there wasn't enough food and and their families inside.

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So the Children, um, needed extra food, and there wasn't enough. So it was quite an international incident. The international press was all around taking pictures so that the Cuban government decided to turn it into a political battle with the United States. And so they opened the port, which was an invitation to the Cuban American community in Miami to come to Havana, come to Mariel Harbor and pick them up.

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And that initiated the boat lift the so called Freedom flotilla. It's at that point that the character of the people leaving Cuba begins to change. Oh, and this is where we begin to pick up those elements who were not members of the working class, uh, people who were in the mainstream of Cuban society but who may even have been in prisons and mental asylums.

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Yes, there is a small percentage, and I emphasize small in absolute terms. Any percentage 5 10% of 100 25,000 people is still quite a few people. But in percentage terms, um, there are people that come directly from the prisons, but in various ways. One of the ways, for example, was that if someone, if a prisoner was faced with another three year term, they were offered the three year term or a chance to go on the boats to Miami, Alright, many of them took the opportunity to go to Miami.

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Interestingly, though some of them refused to go to Miami, they'd rather stay in jail in prison, then leave the country. So that is a very complex, perhaps an example of incredible devotion to fatherland or motherland, whichever way you want to express it, that there is such a love of the home country that even under these circumstances, the individual would not choose to seek liberty in Miami and the United States.

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That really is incredible, isn't it? Well, you have to remember that. It's it's not only devotion to the country, which is hard to tell, but they had their family in Cuba as well. So it was a choice for many of them to leave their families and their communities and go off to another land.

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Well, that's an interesting fact. You introduced Now they could not take their families with them. Many of them could not. That's right. They were offered passage. And that's all, Um, uh was that the same? Was that same restriction placed on the rest as well? In other words, were most of the people who left, uh, single males relative to the former flows of Cubans.

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Um, which came in 1959 1962 in 1965 in 1973. This is a third large wave relative to the two earliest groups. This is a group that has a higher proportion of non married people, both women and men. Um, but it's important to remember that in the 65 to 73 the so called aerial bridge wave, um, the reasons you could leave Cuba were precisely because you had family that you were taking the restriction there was if you were a military age or of an occupation that was vital to the national economy, to the Cuban economy.

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Bob, Since we're speaking of those earlier waves of immigration into the United States, I wonder if it is fair to draw this comparison that the first wave in 1959 62 was characterized by a professional and political class that was prior to the Fidel Castro takeover of Cuba, heavily involved in Cuban governmental and business activities and professional work.

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Many physicians and teachers, for example, were among that number. They brought with them their families who like their the principles were highly educated and cultured, and when they arrived in Miami and other parts of the United States, they entered the mainstream of us society and succeeded rather rapidly in building new careers.

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And then, in 1965 through 73 the second wave that you described again. We have element of the Cuban population that is reasonably well educated, though more of the working class than of the professional and governmental class, and they, too, are well assimilated and at a reasonable rate.

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But with the memorial group, you have blue collar workers, less well educated, if educated at all with a halting command of English and I have heard it said, with few marketable skills. I wonder if the characterization that I have in my mind, as I recollect all of this is, is accurate.

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Well, I would agree with most of it, Um, but it's it's more complex and heterogeneous. Let's take the earliest flow the so called Golden Exile, the first wave of Cubans that were from such high status backgrounds and made the reputation of the Cuban American community in Miami by their particularly their business success.

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That flow, which only happens over two or three year period, actually consists of many different flows. There was an initial wave early on in the revolution of landowners and businessmen the people that would be directly threatened by a government that would nationalize the economy and eventually socialize it.

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When those people came to the United States, many of them already had investments in Miami and in South Florida. Others already worked, or they worked in Havana for US corporations. So they had ties. They didn't come as the Sojourner, the pilgrim, without any connection already there there was.

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One estimate I've seen is that there's approximately $155 million of Cuban investment in South Florida, 1955. So there's already a good bit of connection before the revolution that allowed these people to leave. Um, a second wave is, uh, professionals, particularly within Havana, because there's a series of reforms urban reforms, legal reforms.

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So there's a wave of lawyers that come out, um, and and tenants landlords who are threatened by these social reforms. Now the the reason for all this complexity is that it's not as simple as the Communists came in, and they threw everybody out. In fact, many of the people are left even in the early flow.

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We're working class, um, so that the first flow is very heterogeneous and when the first Cuban American community forms in Miami in the early sixties. There's a lot of poor people in 1962 for example, the government figures are that there's 67% of the Cuban population is on is receiving some form of public assistance.

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That's hardly a golden exile image, so it's a very complex picture. But what happens in Havana is that you have many of the working class people who worked in U. S firms, Um, culturally, in terms of consumption, they were oriented to the United States. So a new government that was committed to major social reform threatened them as well as those who actually owned, um property.

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So there's very a different now. What happens in the Cuban American community in that early flow is that the business people, by and large, former business people, um, and some very enterprising middle class and men from men and women from Havana are able through small business loans that the government offered through pulling of of income, uh, in the in the Cuban community itself.

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Through these former connections to US, firms were able to establish businesses, uh, both of a very large scale some construction industries, hotel industries and financial banks, financial institutions, but also a layer of just shops and restaurants. They become very important because they set up, uh, economic layer of owners entrepreneurs that when the 65 to 73 flow comes which are working class, more middle class, um, many government bureaucrats who are by now disenchanted with the major reforms, moving more in a socialistic direction.

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Um, in Cuba, they're beginning. They're beginning to leave as well. And the former wave of Cuban Americans, um, higher these Cubans coming in the 65 73. So they're not assimilating into American culture as much as they're assimilating. Or they're they're being incorporated into their moving into, uh, what's been called a Cuban enclave in Miami.

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Um, and so the success of the first Wave Group was very important as a footnote, and it's hard to gauge how important this is, but it needs to be said it's also very controversial, But it needs to be said that the CIA in the early sixties set up Miami as a major, um, post for, uh, that grew very rapidly, and so, to some degree that the movement of money through that governmental agency into the Miami community, um, enlivened the the the economy of the region.

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So how important that is is a question, but it needs to be mentioned. Yes, I I want to continue the development of this theme, the three waves of immigration. But let me just ask a question that occurs to my mind at the moment when the Maori Alito's we're here for a short time.

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There was an astonishing number of them who apparently wanted to get back to Cuba, including nine or more who hitchhike who, uh, hi, Jack hijacked commercial airliners in order to pull that off. I don't recall hearing that there were any from the first two waves of immigrants who events to strong desire to return or who did anything about it.

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Is my recollection faulty? Ah, it's not faulty according to historical record, and I don't know if any that wanted to return. However, um, the Cuban American exile community, those who are most militantly opposed to the Castro government had plans to go back anyhow one way or the other.

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And so the Bay of Pigs invasion was a way to get back. Um, and the characteristic of the material flow. It's it's quite true. A proportion of them came in voluntarily because of this very tough choice. Stay in prison or go, um, they came in voluntarily and as those, perhaps who are the ones who have wanted to get back and have chosen desperate means to do so.

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In addition, however, there's a there's a group in the material flow, and in fact, I think, a major reason for the material flow, um, was the ever present attraction of the United States as a cultural, uh, consumption oriented society with, with all these, um, expectations of advancement and progress, personal progress in terms of wealth, Um, that would attract just about anybody in the world.

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And it does major flows from everywhere. Some of the Mariel Cubans came here with those kinds of expectations, particularly the youth, and they realized that those expectations were by and by and large false, or that you had to work much, much harder in the United States to reach those expectations.

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Then you did in Cuba, where there are basic levels of guarantees for jobs and standard of living here. It's an enterprise society where you work day in and day out. Yes, you certainly do, as many of them learned, and there are numerous accounts of how some of them succeeded quite well, um, finding employment and more than employment but rapid advancement in certain jobs.

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We have one example of a Marie Alito who went to Florida International University and achieved an engineering degree very successfully. Another became a television news photographer and won an Emmy, which is the highest award in television and that within the space of a few short years after leaving Cuba, and I'm sure that there are many other success stories as well.

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But now let's talk about the problem stories because they're obviously was a hardened criminal element and of the A grand jury in Dade County did report an upsurge in felony crime in Miami after the arrival of many of the Mari Alito's police forces reported the same in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where Mari Alito's had immigrated.

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Let's talk a little bit about that. First of all, how we isolated some of the Cubans who are still in jail in federal prison in Atlanta, 1000 or more, and how others slipped through the fingers of the authorities and got into crime related situations such as I've described the screening that took place first in Key West and then in the resettlement camps.

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It was very difficult. You had boats arriving by the hour by the half hour and they didn't have any records. The key difference between the material flow and all former Cuban migrations is that the United States had no ability to screen personnel in Havana before they left.

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All right, that that was a standard condition of every other migration. So you had people actually arriving on our shores that us people, the immigration service the State Department had never seen before, had never interviewed. So it was a problem. They're already here. Problem is, what now to do with them how to sort them.

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Some of the easiest ones to identify were several of them on the boats were in their prison uniforms. That would be a clue. And, uh so they were immediately around them. Um, in addition, many of the, um, other Cubans, the higher status Cubans, pointed out people that they said were in jail.

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So there was that kind of informing, but some had been perhaps political prisoners only in jail. Well, there's there's a whole range of prisoners. Yes, there are convicted felons that were released onto the boats. Um, there's a whole group of young what we would call juvenile delinquents that had tremendous problems.

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Violent, violent natures in Cuba. They were released, and they were sent by and large to Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, where they were initially resettled. But then you get a whole range of the majority of the so called prisoners who are were in prison for, um, reasons that in the United States we would not, um, see, as as major, they would be misdemeanors.

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That certainly wouldn't be felons, um, particularly, uh, participating in black market activities in Havana That's critical and that a lot of people get arrested because their consumption shortages and they're out on the black market trying to to buy basic goods. You also get those who are out on the black market just wheeling and dealing to, and they get arrested.

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So there's complexity within that. There's also I would I would take the guests, that there's about 25% of the prisoner population that by the Cubans, admission were political prisoners. That is that they had been arrested for charges of sabotage and conspiracy. Some of those had been in prison for, um 10, 15 years.

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Others have been in for several years. So there is that component, remember? Now this is just a small percentage of the entire flow that we're dealing with. So who is a prisoner and what does it mean? To be a prisoner in Cuba is is quite diverse.

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Now, what happens in the United States? We screen out and we we identify approximately, I think, 17 100 hardened criminals, the ones that we would, um, put in the penitentiary in Atlanta Penitentiary and have a very hard time admitting that they should be released. Yes, they occupy a very strange status.

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I understand that the immigration service has them identified as entrance quote unquote a kind of never never land of status in our society. And one wonders if this kind of open ended detention is constitutional. And if these 1000 plus prisoners are receiving due process, Well, first of all, let me clarify the term entrant was given to the whole group, um, in 1980 when the flow was at its peak, the Carter administration decided not to grant them refugee status, which means that under the Refugee Act of 1980 which was only passed a month before the material flow, so this was the first test of the new refugee law.

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The refugee law, once they're declared refugees, would have given them all and the state of Florida. All kinds of financial assistance from the federal government, essentially three years, 100% federal reimbursement of all unemployment costs, all public assistance costs. All resettlement costs the Carter administration. In an election year where the major opponent, then Senator Kennedy, immediately got on the TV and announced that they should be declared refugees, the Carter administration decided not to grant them refugees.

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It was also the time when you had a height of the Haitian influx. So it was, should we grant Haitians the refugee status, also, along with the Cubans? So it was decided to give neither refugee status and declare them entrance, And that gives them an ambiguous status that only this week it's only being discussed.

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Now in Washington, the Reagan administration finally wants to give the Cuban entrance, but only the Cuban entrance, not the Haitian entrance adjustment of status and declare them permanent resident aliens, which would be what an immigrant becomes one year after their in the United States and then are on their way to citizenship.

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I understand that there is a bill proposed in Congress to allow the Mari Alito's to bring their families to the United States after a three year wait. I don't know what the status of that bill is, but that would seem to be a humane gesture and one that is logical, given the fact that the United States opened its doors in the first place to the people who came at that time.

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In retrospect, do you think that the Carter administration handled that matter wisely? You can make a political judgment on this program if you wish. The Carter administration made two mistakes. Um, the first mistake they made is in not moving more quickly and more forcibly to shut the boat lift off from Miami to Havana what they Miami to Havana but later took steps to do that by finding the owners the owners of boats owners are taking them down to Yes, all right, see the flow?

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The Cubans were on the beach, but they needed some way to get out, and they were being fueled by many of the Cuban Americans leaving Miami and picking them up. So there should have been some, and my judgment moved early on, not necessarily, as the Card administration later did, which was to send the Coast Guard and block it, but to use the Cuban American community, which was against the boat lift after they realized that the Cuban government was, in fact putting questionable people, um, into the boats, Cuban American community.

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The leadership mostly primarily, was against the boat lift. They saw it as another way of the Cubans using the United States. Instead of enlisting that support, the Carter administration felt that if they blocked the boat lift, there would be, uh, civil disorder in the streets of Miami.

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They called that one wrong. I think the second thing that they did wrong, in my opinion, is after after they were here, after the problem was here, they should have dealt with it with all the, um, force and resources the federal government had, which was declared them refugees, by the way, what is?

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And we only have a minute remaining less than a minute, but very quickly. What is the attitude of the Cuban American population in Miami today toward the Mary Alito's? Have they accepted them? By and large, they have now, But they've undergone a tortuous, um, introspection for their community.

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Um, they in the first days of the flow, uh, these were the heroes again. Coming. Um, then they were violators, ruining the image of the Cuban American community. Now there's some adjustment and reaction. Thank you, Bob. My guest has been Robert Bach, professor of sociology at the State University of New York in Binghamton, a specialist in Latin American studies and in particular, immigration studies in the Caribbean.

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Thank you, Bob, for this illuminating, uh, and fascinating, uh, discussion about the Mari Alito's and immigration from Cuba in the three waves. And most recently, that for Mario. Uh huh, Yeah,