Cuban Refugee Adjustment Act (1966)

The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 was the response of Congress to the Camarioca boatlift and the airlift that followed it. On November 2, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed the bill that granted special status to Cuban immigrants, authorizing the attorney general to grant permanent resident status to any Cuban who had been granted admission or parole into the United States after January 1, 1959, when Fidel Castro forced the resignation and flight of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Persons being granted permanent resident status must also have been physically present in the United States for two years. The law removed the necessity for Cubans who had entered the United States after Castro's victory to apply for political asylum in order to remain legally in the United States. This special status for Cuban immigrants remained unchanged until another crisis in 1994 pushed the administration of President Bill Clinton to adjust U.S. policy.

Castro, in effect, extended an invitation to Cubans in the United States to transport family members still in Cuba to the United States in 1965 when he opened the port of Camarioca in northern Cuba to boats arriving to evacuate relatives. The port remained open from October 10 to November 15. During the five weeks the boatlift lasted, 5,000 Cubans made the trip. In December, the so-called Freedom Flights began. Over the next eight years, about 250,000 Cubans arrived in the United States on these flights. It was in the context of these events that the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 was enacted.

The Cuban refugees who had entered the United States via the boatlift or the airlift were not automatically granted lawful permanent residence under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Applying for permanent residence required an immigrant to leave the United States to secure an immigrant visa at a U.S. consular office abroad and then reenter as a permanent resident. Clearly such a practice was impractical for the enormous numbers of Cuban refugees. In addition to providing refuge to Cubans who were oppressed in their own country, the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) eased the administrative burden for both the immigrants and immigration offices and allowed for the integration of the Cuban exiles into the American workforce. Although not part of the public rationale for adopting the legislation, the CAA was also an important move in the ideological war against communism. For almost [Page 632]30 years, the CAA offered open-ended permanent residence to all Cubans who made it to the United States.

In summer 1994, Castro once again gave Cubans unrestricted leave to immigrate to the United States. The sudden influx of 25,000 Cubans arriving on rafts of all descriptions brought the total of Cuban immigrants for the year to 40,000. The Clinton administration responded by prohibiting the entrance of the raft refugees until an agreement could be reached with the Cuban government. In the interim, they were housed at Guantanamo Bay along with refugees from Haiti.

On September 9, 1994, Cuba and the United States signed a joint communiqué in which the two countries agreed that the United States would not allow Cubans rescued at sea to enter the United States, that the open-door policy of the ACC granting parole to all Cubans who reached the United States would end, and that the United States would issue a minimum of 20,000 immigrant visas annually through the Interest Section in Havana. Less than a year later, the Clinton administration issued the U.S.-Cuba Joint Statement on Migration. Among other provisions, it allowed for the parole of most of the Cubans detained at Guantanamo Bay into the United States.

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