Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Castro announced the Mariel Boatlift. On April 20, 1980, allowing all Cubans wishing to emigrate to the U.S. to do so. Free to board boats were provided at the port of Mariel west of Havana, and the first of more than 125,000 Cuban refugees reached Florida the next day. [Of course, the liberal press insisted that these were only innocent immigrants fleeing an oppressive Cuban regime - and should be welcomed with open arms].
Castro opened Cuban prisons and mental health facilities (and offloaded their expense on America), transporting prisoners and patients to the port of Mariel (Cuba) for the 90-mile trip to Miami. The flotilla was described as “Rag Tag Chaos.’
Crimes committed by these "Mariel immigrants" immediately caused the diversion of social- and criminal-justice resources - and damage to social, political and economic structures of Miami and elsewhere for the next ten years! The long-term impact on education, health and local labor markets was enormous. A later study by Cuban-born Harvard professor George Borjas, asserts that the boatlift caused pay among native-born Miami high school dropouts, many of whom were black, to plummet by up to 30 percent (Others claimed the effect on wages and unemployment was not that high - David Card - Princeton).
In response, the infamous Krome Detention Centers (and other border centers) were established, housing immigrants that could not be readily assimilated ... for years!
Almost 40-years later, America continues to suffer these similar problems because of weak, unenforced immigration laws that do little to protect our porous national borders. It's been estimated there are almost 24 million illegal immigrants across America today.
The 10,000++? person caravan now flooding toward our Southern borders (and 'sanctuary cities') ... just in time for the midterm elections. This caravan is much more than a reflection of America's continued failure to protect its borders. This caravan is obviously being funded, transported and manipulated by anti-American forces ... determined to influence the midterm elections.
Nobody knows exactly who is behind this "spontaneous migration." But, that is likely to be revealed by who takes advantage of the same "humanitarian quandry" that faced America during the Mariel boatlifts, to promote their own political ambitions ... and tear down the opposition. Anyone want to guess which media outlets and politicians that will be?
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
