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Balsero crisis has
made South Florida better
Our opinion: immigrants
have revitalized, enriched community
Posted on Wed, Aug. 25,
2004 in The
Miami Herald.
Refugees have long fled to South Florida
in search of freedom and the opportunities
that accompany it. Even so, 1994 was a watershed.
A Herald four-part series that ends today
recalls that tense year in which political
turmoil in two neighboring countries turned
the Florida Straits into a human tide.
Ten years later, we see how those events
have reshaped South Florida. The balseros
and other Cubans who came in their wake
have enriched our community in many ways
and reconnected it to the island. Galvanized
by unfair immigration treatment, the local
Haitian community has grown as a political
force. Their successes are a testment to
the power of immigrant risk-takers and the
resilience of our community.
The boat people came in every conceivable
type of floating contraption, from rickety
sail boats to inner tubes lashed together
with rope. At the height of the rafter crisis,
some 32,000 Cubans and 22,000 Haitians were
sent to detention camps at the U.S. naval
base in Guantánamo, Cuba.
U.S. invades Haiti
The Haitians had fled the bloody Cedras
dictatorship that had ousted President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide in 1991. Political violence, economic
hardship and refugee outflow have increased
since. The burgeoning number of Haitian
boat people at Guantánamo and pressure
from the U.S. Haitian community, Florida
politicians and others finally got the Clinton
administration to act. In September 1994,
U.S. forces invaded Haiti, restored Mr.
Aristide to power and repatriated all Haitians
in Guantánamo, including 213 unaccompanied
children. That experience forged a new generation
of Haitian-American activists equally concerned
with U.S. immigration policy and politics
in Haiti.
Repatriation policy
Some consequences of the balsero crisis
also have been bittersweet for Cuban Americans.
U.S.-Cuba immigration accords in 1994 and
1995 spawned the wet-foot/dry-foot policy,
which meant that some Cubans who didn't
reach U.S. soil would be repatriated. The
same accords, however, provided for most
of the 35,000 balseros detained in Guantánamo
to come to the United States; and for an
annual entry of thousands more that has
brought upwards of 230,000 Cubans here in
the last 10 years.
Raised within the Cuban revolution, those
newcomers injected diversity and vitality
into South Florida's Cuban community. They
have rejuvenated interest in new Cuban music,
dance and art. Having left relatives on
the island, they tend to support people-to-people
policies, including allowing more travel,
care packages and remittances to Cuba.
As more of them climb the economic ladder,
become citizens and get involved in politics,
we may well see even greater diversity of
views on U.S. policy toward Cuba and reconciliation
in post-Castro Cuba.
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