between various U.S. government agencies and international and domestic humanitarian partner organizations.34 Resettled refugees generally arrive on special flights arranged by the U.S. government; the nonprofit agency hosting them reimburses the government for their airfare, then collects payment from the refugees through a loan program.35
Asylum seekers come to the United States the same ways other migrants arrive: at a land or sea border, or through airports. If they don’t have a valid visa, and immigration authorities try to stop them from entering the country, they may ask for asylum on the basis that they have been persecuted in their country of origin and are afraid to return there. Those who are able to enter the United States legally (or who manage to enter undetected) may apply for asylum through an “affirmative” process within a year after arriving.36 People who are ordered deported from the United States can apply for asylum, “withholding of removal,” or protection under the Convention Against Torture through a “defensive” process if they are afraid to return to their country of origin.37
People who succeed in winning asylum have the same rights and status as people who arrive in the United States as refugees.38
SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR CUBANS
Discriminating based on national origin would seem to violate basic principles of fairness. But in the case of Cubans, their privileged treatment is written into law.
Some 800,000 Cubans immigrated to the United States between 1960 and 1980. They left Cuba for many reasons: some were opposed to the leftist revolution of 1959 and feared persecution; wealthy and middle-class Cubans lost property or economic opportunities because of socialist policies; and poorer Cubans fled the island later as its economy stagnated, at least in part because of a U.S. embargo. But they were able to come here because the U.S. government actively encouraged Cubans to immigrate.
From 1959 to 1961, about 125,000 Cubans arrived in the United States. The U.S. Coast Guard did nothing to stop them from entering the country, and the administration of John F. Kennedy then used executive parole authority to admit them, and those who followed, without regard to the quota limits established by the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act.39
In 1966 Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allowed Cuban immigrants to apply for permanent resident status after two years in the United States; the 1980 Refugee Act reduced the wait time to one year. Most restrictions on other immigrants are waived for Cubans; they can apply for resident status even if they entered without permission.40 The government even supplied assistance to Cuban immigrants as they arrived—$1.4 billion by 1980.
Welcoming Cuban immigrants fit in with U.S. efforts in the early 1960s to bring down President Fidel Castro. The policy provided a pool of people who could be recruited to fight the Cuban government; at the same time, it hurt the Cuban economy by luring away academics, scientists, professionals, and experienced managers. And the streams of refugees fleeing the island hurt the reputation of the Cuban revolution.41
Over a seven-month period from April 15 to October 31, 1980, starting just a few weeks after the passage of the Refugee Act, some 130,000 Cubans landed in Florida in a “freedom flotilla” from the Cuban port of Mariel. This time the migrants were primarily young working-class men, many of them black.42 The Refugee Act now provided a process for determining whether individual migrants qualified for asylum, but the administration of then-president Jimmy Carter chose not to apply the Act’s provisions to the new wave. Instead, Carter used executive authority to parole the Marielitos, as they became known, into the United States under a new category of “Cuban-Haitian entrants.”43
The United States was happy to receive the first wave of Cuban immigrants, who were “disproportionately well-educated, white, and of upper-echelon occupations and income,” according to New York University professor David M. Reimers. But as the later waves of Cubans turned out to be less well educated and less white, they “were not as welcome as earlier groups had been.” A Gallup poll in 1980 indicated that 59 percent of the U.S. public felt immigration by the Marielitos wasn’t good for the country, with only 19 percent feeling it would be good.44
The U.S. government changed its policy in 1994 and 1995 after a series of negotiations with the Cuban government. The two countries agreed to let 20,000 or more Cubans apply for U.S. immigrant visas each year from inside Cuba, and the U.S. government modified its treatment of Cubans who try to enter the United States without permission. Under what became known as the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy, Cubans who make it to land are still accepted under the old Cuban Adjustment Act, while Cubans who are intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard while at sea are returned to Cuba—although they may be treated as refugees and settled in a third country if they express a credible fear of persecution in Cuba.45
Why should we accept refugees?
So-called developed nations have more resources for hosting refugees than poorer nations do. These richer countries are often also partly responsible for the plight of refugees because they help to trigger or deepen the conflicts that cause people to flee “underdeveloped” or “third world” nations. Governments and their corporate allies in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Western Europe expand their power and profits by extracting resources, selling weapons, and engaging with corrupt and brutal leadership in less-developed countries.
For example, in eastern Congo, militia forces profit from the global demand for coltan, a mineral used in manufacturing computers and mobile phones. The militias are responsible for the violent persecution of local residents, provoking displacement.46 Meanwhile, the West’s four major arms exporting countries—the United States, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom—are engaged in exporting arms “to countries which serve supplying states’ domestic economic and security interests” without consideration of human rights records or other ethical factors, according to researchers Richard Perkins and Eric Neumayer. In fact, the researchers found that countries known to abuse human rights received a greater than average share of U.S. weapons transfers.47
Do asylum seekers have it easy?
If you’re fleeing for your life, you may have a hard time obtaining valid travel documents before you leave, let alone gathering proof of the harm you suffered. And if you arrive without valid documents, or are caught trying to enter the United States without permission, you will be subjected to a process called “expedited removal.”48
This means the border agency can send you back to your country without giving you a chance to plead your case to an immigration judge. If you tell border agents that you are afraid to return to your country, they are supposed to grant you a “credible fear interview,” where you can try to convince an asylum officer that your fear of persecution is real, and that there is a “significant possibility” that you will win your asylum case.49
Under UNHCR guidelines, anyone fleeing persecution is supposed to be granted a meaningful opportunity to seek asylum. But in practice, this doesn’t always happen: the advocacy group Human Rights First reported in 2012 that a number of asylum seekers who had expressed a fear of return were not referred by U.S. officials for credible fear interviews. In particular, migrants from Haiti who arrive by sea and are intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard are generally not informed that they may be entitled to a credible fear hearing.50
For those who do get a chance, the wait time for a credible fear interview is generally about two weeks.51 In the meantime, you’ll be locked up under jail-like conditions in crowded immigration detention facilities or holding cells. As an “arriving alien,” your detention is mandatory
