Americans at the Gate: The United States and Refugees during the Cold War

CHAPTER 5. "They Are Proud People": The United States and Refugees from Cuba, 1959–1966

C H A P T E R 5 “They Are Proud People”: The United States and Refugees from Cuba, 1959–1966 IMMIGRATION REFORM IN 1965 did not substantively address the hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving from Cuba. The U.S. government ’s decision in early 1959 to admit Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution grew through the following decade into a massive commitment that by and large conformed to precedent. Cuban refugees, like their predecessors in the 1950s, were of European descent and opposed communism. While Cuba’s importance to the Cold War virtually ensured an American response to the refugee problem, a mix of domestic political and cultural concerns also explained U.S. actions. Cuban refugees entered the United States via an admissions process administered by the INS and State Department that bore striking similarities to 1950s refugee programs, especially in its reliance on the “parole” authority. Finally, the U.S. government launched an extensive effort to publicize the arrival of Cuban refugees in the best possible light, largely by emphasizing the refugees’ “American” qualities. The commitment to Cuban refugees, though, also represented a significant departure.1 While the admission of European refugees in the 1950s engendered opposition nationally, hostility to the entry and arrival of Cuban refugees was largely contained to southern Florida and Miami throughout the 1960s. More striking, entry requirements loosened considerably on a number of fronts. Gone were the days of screening out refugees who did not have guarantees of jobs or homes or were likely to become public charges; instead, the federal government launched a comprehensive resettlement program that supported refugees until they were comfortably resettled with jobs and housing. The INS and State Department still administered a security investigation that required Cubans to declare their opposition to communism and Castro, and some evidence suggests that the INS, which hired some of the most vigorous anticommunists in the Cuban refugee community to assist in the screening process, had more than a passing interest in the political pasts of Cuban refugees. But the government did not prohibit the entry of former communists or Castro supporters, nor did investigators appear to devote much energy to uncovering the political histories of parole applicants. Instead, Refugees from Cuba • 107 the focus of the security check became the detection of subversives, usually defined as agents of the Castro government. Thus, while the ghosts of Scott McLeod and the investigatory state could not be exorcised so easily, the anticommunist political litmus test of the early 1950s continued to recede as it had during the Hungarian refugee crisis. The arrival of Cuban refugees also led to a rethinking of notions of citizenship. In 1966, Congress looked, as it had in 1958 for Hungarians, to clarify the immigration status of Cuban parolees. With passage of the Cuban Status Adjustment Act, refugee advocates opened a path toward American citizenship for Cuban refugees, who were described as easy converts to American life because of their self-sufficiency, hard work, and anticommunism. In the debates over this legislation, the refugees’ anticommunism was still considered a mark of their potential for membership in the American nation, but those political bona fides often were treated as pro forma—and as less vital than cultural or social attributes. In this way, then, the Cuban admissions, like the immigration debates of 1965, demonstrated again the fading importance of anticommunism in American life. Most remarkably, the Cuban Status Adjustment Act led politicians, refugee advocates, and Cuban refugees themselves to endorse a bifurcated citizenship in which Cubans might become permanent residents or citizens while still planning to return to the island. Status normalization , in the case of Cuban refugees, condoned divided loyalties. No previous refugee group, or immigrant group for that matter, had been granted such leeway.2 CUBAN REFUGEE FLOWS AND AMERICAN RESPONSES, 1959–1973 On New Year’s Eve 1958, the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled to the Dominican Republic. One day later, the 26th of July Movement, an insurgency led by Fidel Castro, took control of Havana. In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, the new government (including Castro) was uncertain of its precise ideological and programmatic course. Some Cubans had no interest in discovering the Revolution’s future. Fearing for their safety, a few hundred Batista officials and personal friends of the deposed dictator immediately fled to the United States. Those with visas were admitted as temporary visitors, while the rest, lacking documents, were paroled. As the Cuban revolution increasingly fell under...