The Welcome Wears Thin

By George J. Church.

Homeless and jobless, many Cuban refugees are getting restless

Still they come, although no longer are the arrivals welcomed to the U.S. with "open heart and open arms," in Jimmy Carter's memorable phrase of May. Even so, Cubans continue to set sail from their homeland and arrive on the shores of Florida. Some 185 disembarked at Key West on a single day last week.

Still they come, despite a dismaying fact: the passage of time has not helped the U.S. to absorb the 120,000 Cuban refugees who have poured in since April. The problem endures stubbornly, disrupting life in Miami and southern Florida in particular, posing special difficulties of assimilation that have baffled and enraged local, state and federal officials.

Jobless and homeless in a strange country, some of the disillusioned Cuban refugees not only talk of wanting to go back home, a few have been driven to desperate measures. Two weeks ago, Cubans seized six airliners, three on Aug. 16 alone, and forced the pilots to fly to Havana; the skyjackings set records for the most in one week and the most in a single day. Stern security measures, augmented by reports that Fidel Castro has thrown the successful skyjackers into Cuban jails, appeared to be taking effect, however: there were no new skyjackings last week.

If anything, the basic problem of handling the Cuban refugees was getting worse. In Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, Pa., one of four camps where Cubans are held until sponsors can be found to give them homes, 1,000 troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division stood guard over 4,000 Cubans last week to prevent a repetition of the Aug. 5 riot in which 16 camp officials and 42 Cubans were injured, one fatally. In Fort McCoy, Wis., homosexual attacks and knife fights have broken out among the 5,300 Cubans housed in the camp; many are refugees under 18 who face continued idleness in what they view as a prison unless good Samaritans can be found who will assume legal guardianship as foster parents.

Nowhere, however, do the tensions and torments equal those in southern Florida, especially Bade County and its central city, Miami. More than half the Cuban refugees have been encamped there, joined by the vast majority of 30,000 black Haitians fleeing extreme poverty and the political repression of Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier. Thus Dade County confronts a challenge distinctive in American history: absorbing about 100,000 new residents, roughly equal to the population of Roanoke, Va., who for the most part are poor, unskilled, and unversed in the language of their new country, and doing it in just four months.

Superficially, the Miami area might seem to be the best place for Cubans to settle. Some 500,000 Cubans began arriving there shortly after Castro took over Cuba in 1959, and today Hispanics constitute 38% of Dade County's 1.6 million population. The early arrivals managed to get along with the area's non-Latin whites (47%) and blacks (15%); indeed, the Cubans' energies helped to transform Miami from a stagnating tourist town into a vibrant trade and financial center. And the Cuban advance guard created a cosmopolitan atmosphere in which the new arrivals can feel culturally at home: in Miami's Little Havana, Spanish is the predominant language, and at almost every corner there is a stand selling the dark, strong cafe cubano.

But there are important differences between the old and new refugees. Besides the fact that the earlier arrivals drifted in over a period of 20 years, giving the community time to assimilate them, many were middle-or even upper-class Cubans who arrived with some money and marketable craft or professional skills, and they came in family groups. The new refugees are predominantly penniless workers. A disproportionate number are single young men who grew up under a Communist system and have no idea of what life in a capitalist democracy is like. Though the established Cubans have been generous with donations of food, clothing and money, and have taken refugees into their homes, many are as apprehensive as their Anglo and black neighbors about the newcomers. Says Insurance Executive Leslie Pantin: "The undesirables are hurting the Cuban image of respectability."

The greatest problem is that the sheer numbers of new refugees have simply overwhelmed community facilities. Says Metro Bade County Commissioner William Oliver: "We're at the crisis level now." Examples:

Housing. There is very little for the refugees: the vacancy rate in Dade County rental houses and apartments is a mere 1%, and the county has received no federal public housing money in 14 years. Though Washington claims that 85% of the Cuban boat people have been placed with sponsors, many are stacked in crowded matchbox dwellings in Little Havana with distant relatives who have agreed reluctantly to let them stay for a while. Some 750 Cubans live in Campamento del Rio (River Camp), a group of Army squad tents nestled under the elevated highway Interstate 95. People wash at spigots; laundry flutters from wire fences; young, bare-chested men wander morosely among the tents. An ominous new note: the residents of the tent city include not only refugees who have been unable to find a home but some who lived with sponsors for a while and then were turned out onto the streets because their benefactors decided they no longer wanted to keep them.

Jobs. By one estimate, five of every six new refugees have failed to find employment. Says Lucas Perez, 32, a welder who came to the U.S. a month ago: "I've gone through two pairs of shoes looking for work. There is none." Adds Hilda Lisa, 29, watching over two children in the tent city, while her husband looks for work as an electrician: "We had been dreaming of getting out of Cuba for years. And now we are here--no jobs, no housing, nothing to do."

Crime. In the first six months of 1980, crimes of all kinds in Dade County rose more than 20% over the previous year, compared with a statewide increase in crime of less than 15%. In normally placid Miami Beach, rapes, homicides, robberies and burglaries have risen almost 30%.

There have been assaults by new refugees on each other, on whites, on blacks, and attacks by local toughs on the new immigrants. But most of the increase in crime in Dade County seems to stem from attacks by new refugees on established Cuban residents.

Schools. "No school system in the history of American education has had to absorb such a sizable non-English-speaking group in such a short time," says Paul W. Bell, associate superintendent of Dade County schools. Some 13,000 new Cuban and Creole-speaking Haitian pupils--"a greater student population than in most school districts in the U.S.," as Bell notes --will begin classes in Dade County in September. The cost is staggering in a school district that had anticipated a $24 million deficit even without the influx of the new refugees.

White Flight. Though statistics do not exist, real estate agents agree that many white residents of Dade County are leaving for other parts of Florida, other areas of the South--anywhere. Dudley Hodges, 27, is planning to move to Palm Beach County, even though he will have to commute 65 miles one way to his job with the Hialeah fire department. His wife Christine fears that if they stay in Dade County the education of their two small children will suffer because of "the special attention given in the schools to those who don't speak English." Last week Jack Present quit his $30,000-a-year job as city manager of South Miami to accept a post as a job-safety supervisor for Boca Raton, though it pays $10,000 less. His explanation: "This refugee problem is out of hand, I don't feel safe on the streets here any more."

Backlash. Dade County's blacks fear that Cuban and Haitian refugees will crowd them out of jobs. That resentment helped touch off the riots that rocked Miami in May, killing 18 and causing $100 million worth of damage, although there were no documented attacks against the new Cuban refugees. Says Dade County Commissioner Oliver: "The refugee influx is intensifying pressures at the bottom of the ladder." But the blacks have plenty of company among whites. A group calling itself Citizens of Dade United is collecting signatures on a petition to repeal a 1973 law that made Dade a bilingual county and to deny public funding for "utilizing any other language than English, or promoting any culture other than that of the United States." Says Petition Leader Marion Plunske, a North Miami accountant:

"Wouldn't it be nice to live in America?

We're living in a foreign country. We're living in North Cuba."

Whatever they may think of the new refugees, Miamians -- white, black and Hispanic -- react with one emotion to mention of the word Washington: sheer fury. The Federal Government, they charge, has let them be swamped by a human tidal wave and has given them totally inadequate help to cope with it.

Though Washington is committed to picking up the cost of housing and feeding the Cubans in the tent city, Dade County is still trying to collect $1.4 million that it spent to harbor refugees in the first days of the boatlift. Even Uncle Sam's own employees rage against their superiors. Three members of a State Department refugee task force in Miami quit three weeks ago in protest against what they considered Washington's indifference to the refugees. Task Force Director Paul C. Bell charged that he was "hitting my head against a stone wall" trying to get action to ease the Cubans' plight.

Paul Lane, a State Department spokesman in Washington, replies that help is now on the way. Indeed, last week the Government offered $6.8 million to community health centers in Miami and promised $10 million to Miami-area schools. Cynical residents of Dade County reply that they will believe it when they actually get the money.

More federal cash immediately certainly would help. But it would not cure the refugee problem; in both Miami and Washington, officials acknowledge that south Florida simply cannot take in any more refugees, if, indeed, it has not already passed the limit it can accommodate.

Besides trying ineffectively to shut off the flow of refugees with a blockade, Washington asked Castro for the fifth time last week to discuss procedures for returning to Cuba in an orderly way any refugees who want to go back. At week's end Castro finally replied no. In any case, the number who want to return seems small. For example, some 70 Cubans in Miami's tent city have signed a petition asking to be allowed to go back, but seven times that many new refugees land at Key West each week.

The only long-range solution, says State Department Spokesman Lane, is to find sponsors for many of the Cubans in other areas -- New Jersey, for example, which already has a large Cuban population, or California -- where their numbers will not swamp communities. There is no time to lose. As boats continue to land anxious and penniless refugees on Florida's coast, the troubles are growing, day by day.

Reported by Richard Woodbury/ Miami

With reporting by Richard Woodbury

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