Washington, D.C. (May 19, 2020) - In this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, guest Phillip Linderman discusses the history of the Cuban migrant program and provides policy recommendations. Linderman, a retired State Department Foreign Service Officer, served in Trinidad, Chile, Cuba, and post-communist East Germany before returning to Washington, D.C. to work at the Organization of American States. During his time abroad, Linderman worked in the consular sector of the State Department, which was primarily charged with helping American citizens abroad and issuing visas and passports.
The Cuban migrant program began with the Mariel boatlift orchestrated by Fidel Castro in 1980, allowing over 100,000 Cubans to flee to the United States. Castro had long used this tactic to rid Cuba of those hostile to the regime and to clear out prisons and mental institutions. Castro returned to this strategy again in the early 1990s, during the collapse of regimes in Soviet-bloc countries. The Clinton administration reached an agreement with the Castro government to grant Cubans at least 30,000 visas a year - an agreement that still stands today.
In his conversation with Mark Krikorian, the Center’s executive director and host of Parsing Immigration Policy, Linderman argues that this policy has allowed the regime to survive. Rather than fight the regime in Cuba, many disillusioned and anti-communist Cubans instead obtain visas to the United States. He contends that terminating this agreement would enable regime change in Cuba and promote democracy.
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