The chapter describes the unique benefits the Eisenhower through Nixon administrations extended to Cubans after their arrival, as refugees, even though they did not meet near-universally accepted criterion for refugee status. The chapter then addresses the impact the entitlements had on Cubans’ adaptation to the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as Cuban American economic mobility relative to that of native-born people into whose midst they moved, and tensions the privileging of Cubans unleashed between Cuban newcomers and native-born people. Settling mainly in Miami, Cuban immigrants provoked a major nativist response, race riots, and White flight. While the entitlements were good for the Cuban immigrants, they generated inequities and resentments, and unintended consequences.

The chapter briefly reviews general US immigration and refugee policy over the years. It then describes the Cuban revolution, and how and why Cubans who opposed it sought refuge in the United States, and how, in turn, the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations, successively, opposed to the anti-American radical turn of the revolution in the throes of the Cold War, offered Cubans unique immigration and resettlement entitlements. The “soft power” initiatives were intended to delegitimize Castro’s rule by demonstrating Cuban preference for capitalist democracy over Communism and by depleting Cuba of its human capital. In a “path dependent” manner the Presidents extended a string of entitlements, to address issues earlier entitlements generated or left unresolved, and new issues that evolved. The chapter also describes the failure of Washington’s one “hard power” effort to overthrow Castro, with the help of Cuban beneficiaries of “soft power” entitlements: the Bay of Pigs invasion. Neither the “soft” nor the “hard” power strategies kept Castro from consolidating the revolution.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, Cuba, heavily dependent on the former superpower, plunged into a deep depression. Considering emigration their best hope, Cubans in stepped-up numbers fled to Florida without authorization, in makeshift rafts. Concerned with reelection amid mounting nativism, and seeking to avoid “another Mariel” debacle, Clinton blocked the “rafters” from coming ashore. Clinton, however, proceeded to acquiesce to pressure from earlier Cuban immigrants by extending yet new unique entitlements to Cuban immigrants. The chapter then addresses two major political crises Washington’s privileging of Cubans unintentionally unleashed, which affected outcomes of two presidential elections: one crisis involved a Cuban government shoot-down of planes CIA-trained anti-Castro Cuban immigrants flew over Cuban airspace, and the other involved anti-Castro Cuban immigrants refusing to return six-year old Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba after his mother drowned at sea. Instead of advancing US foreign policy interests, Cuban privileging provoked international (bilateral), along with domestic, problems.

Reagan, who won the 1980 Presidential election despite (and because of) outreach to Cuban immigrants, inherited the unresolved problem of the long-term rights of the new Haitian and Cuban immigrants. He responded by extending permanent residency rights to the Cubans but not to the Haitians: by (re)imagining the Cubans as refugees in the absence of evidence that they fled persecution. By conceiving immigrants as refugees, Reagan circumvented admission restrictions set by Congress. He also mobilized Cuban émigrés to suppress Leftist movements then challenging US hegemony in Central America, and allotted federal funds to transform Cubans into domestic lobbyists, well positioned to influence US policy when the Cold War ended under the George H. W. Bush Presidency. The two presidents granted Cuban Americans the unique right to admit Cuban immigrants. At the same time, they turned viciously on Haitians trying to flee violence and persecution in their homeland. The two presidents also reestablished the pre-Carter practice of blocking Haitians from US entry, and detaining and deporting those who managed to make it ashore.

The chapter describes how more Cubans came to the United States in 1980 without authorization than in any previous year, unleashing what became known as the Mariel crisis, named for the Cuban port from where they came. The chapter describes how President Carter responded by granting the visa-less Cubans unique entry rights and resettlement benefit, to address his concern with reelection later that year. The granting of new entitlements to Cubans became driven by domestic and not merely Cold War politics. Earlier Cuban immigrants, beneficiaries of a unique path to citizenship, had votes to deliver in the key state of Florida. Accustomed to special entitlements, the earlier Cubans immigrants pressed President Carter to privilege yet more Cubans: at great economic, social, and political costs. Committed to human rights, President Carter concomitantly broke with the racist practices of his presidential predecessors who repatriated, detained, and deported Haitians; instead, he granted unauthorized Haitian immigrants the same entitlements as Mariel Cubans, as “Entrants: Status Pending,” a specially created immigration category to admit them, while acknowledging them not to be refugees, with long-term rights.

While the conditions that had sustained Cuban privileging for over half a century no longer prevailed – the Cold War concern with defeating global Communism, and, then, political pressure from Cuban American beneficiaries of earlier entitlements to continue privileging Cuban immigrants – the chapter addresses how, in his effort to preserve “America for Americans,” Trump made no exception for Cubans. His administration de facto retracted Cuban entitlements the Obama administration had left intact; it detained and deported unauthorized Cuban land entrants; and it transformed the Mexican and Central American governments into agents of Cuban, as well as other immigrant, exclusion. Cubans lost most of their earlier entitlements, and suffered as a result.

Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, further expanded entitlements for Cuban immigrants, indebted to Cubans in Florida who helped him get elected in 2000 when the state’s vote was highly contested. President Obama enforced Bush’s policies, plus those of earlier administrations. However, he was the first president to extend no new entitlements to Cuban immigrants. Although Fidel had fallen ill and relinquished power to his younger brother Raul, and then died in 2016, Cubans continued to enjoy the unique entitlements initially introduced to bring Castro’s regime to heel in the throes of the Cold War. Then, during his last full week in office Obama ended Cuban exceptionalism “as we knew it” for over half a century. The chapter details the policies Obama retracted and how he capitalized on a growing social and political divide among Cuban Americans to retract entitlements. The chapter also details how the Bush and Obama administrations expanded Haitians “path of disprivilege,” despite political violence, poverty, and persecution plaguing Haiti. Cuban–Haitian inequities continued.

What effect did the special entitlements offered Cubans by eleven Presidents have on actual Cuban immigration? Rates of immigration from Cuba and Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, another Caribbean country of roughly the same population, are compared. The chapter also addresses “lessons learned” about over half a century of US inequitable treatment of immigrants, about how “path-dependent” privileging may be, about use and abuse of Presidential discretionary power to favor certain immigrants and disfavor others, and about how and why immigration and immigrant-related policies and practices may persist long after justified by their initial rationale. “Lessons learned” also include explanations about how and why a country as powerful as the United States has been limited in its control over immigration. The Cuban government, with far less resources, as well as ordinary Cubans, in the United States and Cuba, have also shaped US policies.