Open Heart, Open Arms

Carter promises Cubans a haven, but the problems keep growing

The early signals from the U.S. Government had sounded uncertain, even hostile. But last week Jimmy Carter finally struck a clear note that reaffirmed America's long history of providing sanctuary to those "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Declared the President: "Ours is a country of refugees. We'll continue to provide an open heart and open arms to refugees seeking freedom from Communist domination and from the economic deprivation brought about by Fidel Castro and his government."

Yet as dangerously crowded boats continued bringing Cuban refugees into Key West, Fla., the incoming tide rose to nearly 31,000--and the words of welcome from Washington hardly solved the near chaos created by the sudden influx. How many more Cubans would follow, nobody seemed to know--speculation ranged wildly upward to a quarter of a million, even to 1 million--and that raised the difficult question of whether there are practical limits to the number of refugees the U.S. can take in.

Improvising to meet each day's challenge, U.S. officials mobilized an impressive reception. In less than a week, a city of 161 tents, each holding 30 refugees within its 18-ft. by 52-ft. space, sprang up at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. Long rows of cots completely jammed two 150-ft. by. 240-ft. aircraft hangars, which normally shelter such fighters as the F-15 and F4. With a dormitory and gymnasium also opened to the newcomers, the base alone held nearly 10,000 refugees. Tall pines were being felled to make room for even more temporary housing.

As the chartered airliners arrived from Key West, the weary refugees streamed off with an empty look in their eyes. They carried all the belongings they owned, stuffed in plastic bags and pillowcases. Some shied away from the military trucks and soldiers at first; they had been told back home that they would be mistreated in the U.S. But when a smiling airman in an Air Force van tossed out bags each containing a sandwich, a hardboiled egg, a carton of milk and an apple, the newcomers were delighted. Some of the children had never seen an apple before.

In South Florida, more than a dozen smaller shelters were opened at sites ranging from two former Nike missile bases to the inside corridors of Miami's Orange Bowl. The largest processing center was at Tamiami Park, on the outskirts of Miami, where 1,500 refugees a day plodded through a seven-step process to be cleared for release to join relatives who had fled Cuba years ago. All the while, more kept landing at Key West, to be bused from dockside to Key West Naval Air Station. There up to 5,000 waited, both inside and on surrounding concrete aprons of a huge airplane hangar, for other buses to Miami or airplanes to Eglin.

The tedious waiting in hot and crowded quarters tested tempers beyond the breaking point. Fights broke out when some of the refugees claimed they had spotted Castro spies in their midst. More jostling occurred when refugees scrambled to get on the buses for Miami. National Guardsmen locked arms to push back 400 trying to get into a single bus. Barked an exasperated sergeant through a megaphone: "You waited 21 years to come to America. Now you can wait four hours for a bus."

From Illinois' Scott Air Force Base, the Military Airlift Command dispatched C-141 Starlifters and C-130 Hercules cargo craft to carry ambulances, trucks, tents and even a mobile hospital to the refugee centers. Field kitchens, showers and 27 tons of C rations were flown in. Carter yielded to the plea of Florida Governor Bob Graham and the state's Congressmen and declared a state of emergency in Southern Florida. That will enable local authorities to be repaid from federal funds for their emergency help to the refugees. The President also made $10 million available from a refugee emergency fund to meet other immediate food and shelter costs. The newcomers were declared eligible for food stamps. The ultimate cost of the refugee wave, however, is incalculable.

Florida's well-established Cuban residents pitched in to help their own kin. The Cuban Patriotic Junta, a coalition of exile groups, began handing out $40 in cash to each newcomer. Miami-area Cuban Americans donated an astonishing 40 tons of clothing (about 30% of the Miami area's population is Cuban). Beyond that, boasted Silvia Unzueta, a relief coordinator at Tamiami Park, "We have enough Pampers for every child in the world."

But Florida is already beginning to overflow. Another huge reception center at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas began accepting refugees at week's end. It was preparing for up to 20,000. The experience will not be new for the Army base; it handled some 50,000 Vietnamese refugees in 1975. In case Fort Chaffee also proves insufficient, New Jersey's Fort Dix is next on the list to handle the arrival of even more Cubans.

There were still more than 1,500 American boats of all sizes waiting last week with restless crews and anxious relatives in Cuba's single refugee embarkation port of Mariel, 27 miles west of Havana. Those skippers who are finally permitted to load and sail under Castro's slow and erratic selection of exiles will have greater U.S. protection on the sometimes perilous 110-mile voyage than those hapless earlier captains whose boats were swamped by high winds. The U.S. Navy has the landing ship Boulder and the amphibious assault ship Saipan patrolling the Florida Straits. The Saipan has 14 helicopters equipped for plucking accident survivors out of the sea. The Coast Guard has ten vessels and at least eight helicopters on similar duty. More than 800 Marines were also flown from North Carolina's Camp Lejeune to Key West to help maintain order.

Despite the increasingly skillful planning, confusion has persisted. At Tamiami Park, federal officials for several days doled out up to $143 in cash to each refugee without realizing that a change in U.S. immigration laws effective on April 1 had made such payments illegal until after each exile formally seeks and is granted refugee status in the U.S.

More complicated was the question of dealing with criminals. Castro's officials had included among the fugitives a certain number of ex-cons as well as political prisoners. Special Miami police officers who helped interview the arrivals thought they had detected a number of known felons, but Immigration and Naturalization Service officials refused to treat most of these refugees any differently. "What are we doing here anyway?" protested Miami Intelligence Officer Richard Marrero. "It's all ridiculous." Yet INS had a point too: How could it check out the alleged offenses committed in Cuba, and would there be any point in trying to return people Castro obviously will not take back? Nonetheless, 209 male refugees were sent for further screening to the Federal Correctional Institution in Talladega, Ala. It is a medium-security facility, where the Cubans relaxed by playing softball, pool, Ping Pong and cards. Said one: "There could never be anything like this in Cuba. Jails really are jails in Cuba."

If there was confusion in Florida, its origin could be traced partly to Washington. At least ten agencies were automatically involved in such a large-scale refugee program. Even though Castro has twice previously opened the gates for Cuban refugees, his latest announcement that anyone could leave Cuba came without warning. There was no immediate guidance from the highest levels. Carter was concentrating on salvaging what he could from the failed Iranian rescue mission. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's resignation left a vacuum at the State Department.

INS was busy trying to draw up regulations that would carry out a major reform of U.S. immigration laws. The new law was designed to broaden, rather than restrict, the admission of refugees, and it had been particularly pushed by Carter's rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Edward Kennedy.

The new law eliminated a long-standing assertion that all refugees from Communist countries automatically qualified for U.S. entry. It defines a refugee as a person unwilling or unable to return to his homeland because of "persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, social group or political opinion." Each individual seeking refuge in the U.S. is expected to provide evidence that he fits one of those categories.

Beyond the normal immigration quotas, the law set 50,000 as the number of refugees who could enter the U.S. each year (compared with 17,400 previously). But it gave the President authority to expand that number after consulting with Congress. Carter has already asked that 231,000 refugees be admitted this year. Some 168,000 of them will come from Indochina, since the U.S. has committed itself to accepting 14,000 of these earlier boat people each month.

Carter originally set the Cuban refugee quota at 16,000, but when the Peruvian embassy in Havana was inundated by nearly 11,000 Cubans seeking asylum on April 4 and 5, Carter added another 3,500 to the Cuban quota as part of a hemispheric plan to take care of the embassy refugees. After the first planeloads began arriving in Costa Rica for distribution elsewhere, Castro grew angry at the bad publicity the exodus was giving him, particularly in Latin America. He shut off the airlift and opened Mariel instead to the more dangerous and disorderly sea route to the U.S. That in turn prompted Cuban Americans to flock to Key West to hire boats.

As the ragtag fleet began bringing back unexpected numbers of Cubans, with and without immigration papers, INS officials tried to stick to the letter of the new law, which had not yet been tested. They have ruled that each newcomer has to be individually screened, to file for refugee status and show that he had personal reasons to fear he would be persecuted in Cuba for his political beliefs.

Thus the arriving Cubans had good reason to spread horror stories of Castro's La Peligrosidad (the dangerous law), under which many had been jailed because Castro's block-by-block vigilantes considered them "dangerous" or "anti-social." They told of Castro spies in every neighborhood snooping for any hints of antirevolutionary opinion. "There is no freedom whatsoever!" shouted one excited Cuban at Eglin. "The whole place is crazy!"

While INS processed the newcomers--more than a third were cleared by week's end and waiting to be sent on to relatives or other sponsors--the State Department was trying to curtail the influx by discouraging boat owners from heading for Mariel. This was meant partly to pressure Castro into accepting a more orderly handling of those wishing to leave. (In 1959 he permitted more than 30,000 Cubans to come to the U.S., and between 1965 and 1971 nearly 250,000 arrived via a large airlift.) Again sticking to technicalities of the law, the Administration issued citations that if enforced, will require the boat owners to pay $1,000 fines for each refugee they carried. At last count, 580 such citations had been issued, but it seemed doubtful that the fines in most cases will ever be levied. State Department officials promised to continue to take action, however, against skippers whose boats were dangerously ill-equipped or overloaded.

After Carter committed the U.S. to accepting Cuban refugees, White House Press Secretary Jody Powell outlined the dilemma facing U.S. policymakers. "We will not tow boats back to Cuba," he said. "On the other hand, the U.S. cannot become a place of residence for everyone who wants to come here." The Florida delegation in Congress sought a meeting with Carter and pleaded for placing some limits on the influx of Cubans into their state.

Meanwhile, two broad diplomatic moves were under way. The most pressing was to convince the Cuban government that the 389 Cubans who have taken refuge in the former U.S. embassy in Havana should be given safe conduct out of the country. At the same time, the U.S. was trying to get other nations to join in accepting some of the refugees. Costa Rican President Rodrigo Carazo Odio called a conference last week attended by representatives of 22 nations, but the conferees decided only to send a delegation to Havana.

That means that the U.S. will have to accept far more of the refugees than any other country. Equally as troubling, the "open arms" policy toward the Cubans inevitably angered other nationalities seeking entry into the U.S. The most glaring inequity was between the ready admittance of the Cubans and the very slow processing of an equally large number of poverty-stricken Haitians who have also been making their way to Florida. Some 30,000 Haitian refugees have come to the U.S., mostly in a slow and relatively unnoticed trickle over the past ten years. About 13,000 have applied for refugee status. Very few have been accepted. Nearly all face possible deportation.

The Justice Department contends that there is a logical distinction between the two groups of refugees. Says one official: "The standard is whether they would be persecuted, and very few Haitians can meet the standard." But the congressional Black Caucus charged last week that the U.S. policy is "racist," discriminating against Haitians. Supporters of the Haitians contend that Haiti's President Jean-Claude Duvalier is a right-wing dictator whose government is every bit as repressive as Castro's left-wing regime.

In the end, it is Congress that probably will have to face the dilemma, since it controls the money that the acceptance of large numbers of refugees entails. By one official estimate, each thousand refugees will cost the U.S. $5 million in welfare and health aid, $2 million in food stamps and another $2 million for transportation. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings on the refugee problem this week.

It is Castro who largely decides whether refugees can start streaming toward the U.S. Why the latest exodus? It seems that Castro is using the episode as a way to vent some of the anger and frustration that have been rising in Cuba. Economic conditions have worsened after some improvements a few years ago. The selling price of sugar on the world market has fallen from 660 per lb. in the mid-'70s to a current low of 60. The tobacco crop has been nearly wiped out by blue mold. Cuba today survives on a Soviet subsidy of about $8 million a day.

A Castro miscalculation is also a factor in the exodus. Perhaps as a propaganda gesture, perhaps simply to raise foreign currency, he admitted 100,000 Cuban Americans for short visits to relatives over the past two years. Said Enrique Torres, 36, a Havana auto mechanic: "Seeing all those watches and good clothing--it blew people's minds."

When crowds of Cubans began clamoring to leave, and Castro decided to let them go, he publicly berated them as criminals, derelicts and misfits. Cuban officials did their best to bear out such charges. Anyone boasting a prison record could get priority passage out of Cuba: indeed, some Cuban officials did a brisk business in selling forged prison papers.

There were without question a certain number of criminals among the latest refugees. Cuban Americans who had sailed to Mariel on Castro's pledge that they could pick up relatives there sometimes returned tearfully in boats carrying some young toughs, old winos and even prostitutes (Castro had long insisted that his nation had rid itself of such vice). Armed Castro soldiers marched prisoners directly from jails to the boats, forcing them aboard whether they wanted to go or not. The American crews similarly had no choice but to accept them.

Castro was not making the exodus easy for anyone except those on his list of preferred deportees. Many of the others were asked to pay the Cuban government back for their educations. Some paid $3,000. People owning homes could ask to leave, but when they vacated their houses, the buildings were seized by the government. If they could not get on a Florida-bound boat, they had no home to which they could return.

The large majority of refugees were not criminals or social outcasts.

Most were relatively young; a majority were men; most had blue-collar or clerical rather than professional backgrounds. One early survey counted almost a fourth as being under 21, while an overlapping fourth were women. Three-fourths claimed to have relatives in the U.S.

While they spoke of political oppression in Cuba, they often seemed even more concerned about the scarcity of jobs, food and clothing. They complained of the dreariness of life on the island. Neither poverty nor boredom, of course, met the legal requirements for entry into the U.S.; yet many of the refugees offered poignant reasons for their flight. Some examples:

Eugenio Gonzalez, 34, a trained computer programmer: "I refused to join any of the party organizations, so I worked as a laborer for under $50 a month in a coffee factory. When you apply for a better job you must have proof of revolutionary activities. When they fired me as a computer expert, I got so desperate I bought a rubber inner tube and I was going to float across to Florida. But I was afraid. My father believed in the revolution. Now he weeps."

Carlos E. Garcia, 21, an engineering student: "I was living in a two-room apartment with 14 people.

My three sisters had to sleep in one bed. I slept in the kitchen with four brothers. None of us had any money, and if we had, there was nothing to buy. I and my friends often talked secretly about leaving Cuba. The problem was how. We weren't ex-political prisoners, who could get out. We were just prisoners."

Libia Fernandez, 28, a schoolteacher:

"There is nothing in Cuba. You cannot express what you feel. The only ones who have a good social life are the Communist leaders. They have cars, nice houses. In the last couple of years there has been a lot of hunger, little clothing. Sometimes we don't get soap for three months."

Roberto Gonzalez Perez, 34, a singer:

"Not being a Communist in Cuba is a felony. You are trash. Every time you walk in the street, the police ask for your papers. The Soviet visitors and the tourists eat what we don't eat. They have good cigarettes and good beer. Most of the young people have stolen to live."

While the past waves of Cuban refugees proved hard workers who not only helped each other but strengthened the communities in which they settled, some fears about the latest influx are developing in Cuban-American areas. As the U.S. enters an economic recession, the new load on schools, local services and taxes is not welcome. A few protest rallies have already been held in South Florida. Asks Miami Builder Hank Green, incoming president of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce: "Who takes them in? Who feeds them? I told my family last night, be prepared to be bilingual or to leave."

Just where the Cubans can go and how they will fare once there remains the ultimate problem for the U.S., and the answer will depend on the human reactions of many Americans. At Eglin Air Force Base, two soldiers laboring in the Florida sun to erect tents wondered why they were working so hard. "I don't really feel this is a job for the military," said one. Added the other: "I felt that way this morning, but I've changed my mind. These people are so grateful." In Key West, one 75-year-old man slowly climbed off a shrimp boat, and somebody asked him, "You've come to live in freedom?" As a volunteer took his arm to help him onto the dock, the man quietly replied: "No, I've come to die in freedom."

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