Not Going Away: Cuban Mass Migration to Florida.

After half a century of exiles and defectors, freedom flights and boatlifts, balseros and high-speed boats, and other tragic symbols of the continuous multi-generational exodus across the Florida Straits since 1959, U.S. policymakers seem confident in their ability to accommodate and assimilate mass migration from Castro’s Cuba. Yet that confidence will soon be tested, and could be shaken, by the ongoing historic influx of Florida-bound Cubans who are quietly voting with their feet and saying adiós to la Revolución. By and large, today’s Cubans are not waiting around for General Raul Castro to save socialism or for the regime’s opponents to usher in a liberal free-market society. As one Cuban recently settled in the U.S. told advocates of patience and faith in a long-term transition to democracy, “We’ve been trying to build socialism for 40 years and failed miserably. I’m not going to stay around to try to build capitalism for another 40 years. I want to live in a ready-made society.” (1)

Widespread and deep-seated, the despair and decisiveness implicit in such a statement should remind policymakers in both Havana and Washington that the clock is ticking, and time is running out, on their respective plans for Cuba. More so, it should keep officials in Tallahassee and Miami up at night. Neither Raul’s offer to gradually improve living conditions in exchange for obedient productivity nor the dissidents’ struggle for human rights and democracy can compete with the irresistible allure of a “ready-made” life in the U.S. Why wait for Raul or take risks with the opposition when you can have it all 90 miles away? Such would appear to be the irrevocable reasoning behind the decision of the increasing number of Cubans who opt for Miami.

Many Cubans in the island also fear that the wet/dry foot policy may come to an end. With a new administration in Washington next year, this policy, along with the Cuban Adjustment Act, may be modified or terminated. This fear further increases the urgency to leave the island.

Coming to America

In the last four years more than 131,000 Cubans settled permanently in the United States. Although dwarfed in terms of native population by the top four emigrant nations, Cuba, with 11.2 million inhabitants, is today the fifth leading country of origin for U.S. immigrants. Only Mexico, China, India, and the Philippines (Table I) send more of their native sons and daughters to America than does Cuba. Assuming, conservatively, that an additional 33,000 Cuban migrants will acquire U.S. Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status by the end of the federal government’s current fiscal year (FY 2008) in September, in a five-year period the U.S. will have taken in more Cubans (upwards of 164,000) than in the combined mass migrations of the 1980 (Mariel) boatlift and 1994 (Balseros) rafter exodus.

The truly historic nature of the contemporary exodus lies, however, not only in its magnitude but in its intensity, its relentlessness, with no end in sight. Let us recall the fact that between the Mariel flotilla and the rafts of 1994 stood nearly 15 years, an entire generation. Following both Mariel and the Balsero influx, the U.S., and South Florida in particular, enjoyed a respite, an opportunity to respond and recover: economically, environmentally, culturally, and psychologically. Today’s migratory trend out of Cuba offers no such relief for the foreseeable future, and indeed seems to be on an ascending trajectory. (2)

For Cuba, the dimensions of the ongoing outbound migration are equally if not more troubling. Among the top five countries of origin for U.S. immigrants, Cuba ranks first relative to the size of its population (Table I). For example, China and India, despite sending more than twice as many emigrants to the U.S. as Cuba, lost only a tiny fraction of their skilled citizens (two hundredths of one percent) to the United States during the past four years. On the other hand, after four years of sustained high levels of emigration, Cuba lost the equivalent of 1.2 percent of its total population. These statistics inevitably include the highly-skilled and educated: experienced physicians, teachers, engineers, scientists, professional athletes, and other talented and entrepreneurial Cubans whom the Castro regime would have preferred to keep. Of course, the figure also reflects the departure of Cuba’s most desperate and destitute: the urban lumpenproletariat, idled sugar workers, disaffected dropouts of the socialist education system, rebellious and delinquent youth, dissidents (actual or potential), retirees surviving on meager state pensions, etc. Over the loss of these citizens, Havana is not likely to lose any sleep.

Catching Up to Mexico

A comparison with Mexico reveals that Cuba is not far behind its neighbor in terms of the demographic impact of migration, both on Cuba and for the United States. In fact, Cuba is second only to Mexico among Latin American countries of origin for new U.S. immigrants (Table I). Moreover, Cuba actually surpasses Mexico, as well as all other leading countries of origin, in terms of immigrants to the U.S. as a percentage of the countries’ populations. Hence, while nearly 660,000 Mexicans settled permanently in the U.S. within the last four years, this figure amounts to only six-tenths of one percent of Mexico’s burgeoning population. As noted earlier, for Cuba the emigration to the U.S. of upwards of 131,000 during the same period equates to twice as great a loss, or 1.2 percent of the island’s population.

One could argue that only a small fraction of Mexicans entering the U.S. do so lawfully while virtually all Cubans are granted Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) status, or “green cards,” and are therefore disproportionately reflected in the legal immigration statistics. Nevertheless, the rate of migration from the two Latin American nations to the U.S. is nearly identical. The estimated 500,000 Mexicans who move across the U.S.-Mexico border each year (3) are equivalent to about one half of one percent (0.005) of Mexico’s total population. Yet Cubans, relative to their island’s population, are not far behind. The more than 45,000 Cubans who acquired U.S. LPR status in 2006 constituted approximately four-tenths of one percent (0.004) of the island’s total inhabitants, nearly matching the rate at which Mexicans are migrating to the United States.

A Not So Little Havana: (South) Florida

Unlike immigration from Mexico, historically dispersed throughout the southwestern United States and increasingly absorbed across urban and rural communities nationwide, Cuban immigrants continue to find their way to Florida. Of the 45,614 Cubans who became legal residents of the U.S. in FY 2006, the most recent fiscal year for which state-level data are available, 37,711, or approximately 83 percent of all new Cuban immigrants, settled in Florida (Table II). In spite of the Clinton administration’s policy to resettle Cuban migrants further north and relieve the burden on Florida, the continued geographic concentration of Cubans suggests that such efforts have failed. For the majority of Cubans, emigrating to the U.S. still means moving to Florida, where immigrants of Cuban origin accounted for 24 percent of all immigration to the Sunshine State in 2006 (Table II).

As Cuban immigrants to the U.S. continue to gravitate toward Florida, South Florida (the Miami-Fort Lauderdale metropolitan area) remains the epicenter of what can no longer be considered merely a “Little” Havana. In 2006, approximately 69 percent of all new Cuban immigrants in the U.S. settled permanently in the South Florida region. These 31,431 new residents of Cuban origin comprised 32 percent of all new immigrants in Miami-Dade and Broward counties (Table III). Assuming that roughly 70 percent of all Cuban immigrants to the U.S. eventually make their way to the Miami area, an estimated 115,000 newly arrived Cubans have settled in South Florida in the five-year period spanning 2004-2008. The demographic impact on the region is equal to 29 percent of the current population of the City of Miami (est. 400,000 residents). In comparative terms, at the present rate the ongoing mass migration from Cuba to South Florida will have increased the region’s population by the equivalent of 10 percent (231,000) of Miami-Dade County’s current population (2.4 million residents) by 2013, or as if 11 percent of Havana (pop. 2.2 million) had moved to Miami. In no other 10-year period since 1959 have so many Cubans abandoned their homeland for the United States.(4) With the burden of the coming migration falling on Florida, and South Florida in particular, Tallahassee and Miami will be faced with their greatest demographic challenge yet, and one that is not going away.

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By Hans de Salas del Valle is a Research Associate, Cuba Transition Project, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami.

Notes
1. Statement to author during interview in July 2004 with group of recent Cuban immigrants. See also Cuba Transition Project, “Recent Cuban Refugees: Their Hopes and Fears,” Cuba Focus, Issue 56, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, July 2004, http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue56.htm>.

2. Wilfredo Cancio Isla, “No cesa el éxodo de cubanos hacia Estados Unidos,” El Nuevo Herald (Miami), 10 April 2008, http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/america_latina/cuba/story/187799.html/>.

3. Louis Uchitelle, “Nafta Should Have Stopped Illegal Immigration, Right?,” The New York Times, February 18, 2007.

4. Cf. Cuba Transition Project, “Coming to America: The New Cuban Migration Crisis,” Cuba Focus, Issue 89, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami, November 2007, http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FOCUS_Web/Issue89.htm/>.