Cuban Migrants Head to the U.S. in Record Numbers

Economic hardship, political repression drive tens of thousands to leave the Communist-led island

By José de Córdoba of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"Cuban migrants are arriving in the U.S. at the highest rate since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, fleeing political repression and the island’s worst economic crisis in more than three decades.

More than 175,000 Cuban migrants were apprehended in the U.S. between last October and July, six times as many as in the previous 12-month period, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Most are young, single adults, according to government statistics. Many are relatively well educated, say people who work with the migrants.

The exodus “reflects the desperation, the lack of hope, and the lack of future people on the island feel,” said Jorge Duany, head of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

About 250,000 Cubans left the island in the years immediately after Mr. Castro’s takeover of Cuba in 1959, Mr. Duany said. The current wave also eclipses the roughly 125,000 Cubans who reached the U.S. in 1980 when Mr. Castro, facing a political crisis, allowed hundreds of boats, mostly crewed by Cuban-Americans, to pick them up at the port of Mariel.

Another 30,000 Cubans set out for Florida on makeshift rafts in 1994 when Mr. Castro allowed them to migrate after thousands rioted in the capital Havana over the economic hardship brought on by the end of Soviet subsidies to the Caribbean island."