ABSTRACT
Persons fleeing revolutionaiy political change constitute an important, but often misunderstood dimension of recent South-North population movements. Following an overview of refugees from Cuba and Indochina based on research findings reported in secondary sources, available data regarding the demographic characteristics of the Iranian, Ethiopian, and Eritrean migrant communities aie used to construct the detailed profiles presented for the first time in the next section. Prior to the post-revolution influx, more than 100,000 Cubans lived in the United States—including persons bom here as well as some exiles from the US-supported Batista regime. The Cuban exile population in the United States includes many former professionals, government officials, and relatively wealthy members of the urban society. The overthrow of Haile Selassie’s regime in September 1974 marks a critical threshold in the history of migration from the Horn of Africa to the United States. Beginning in the late 1970s, official refugees from Ethiopia began to enter the United States under the seventh-preference immigration category.
