ABSTRACT
Although special treatment for Cuban migrants was established early, the Cuban exception did not go unchallenged even during the Cold War. When President Johnson declared, at a signing ceremony for the 1965 Immigration Act and without congressional consultation, that the policy of restricting Cuban immigration was over and a new wave would be welcomed to the United States (the announcement that led to the Freedom Flights), there was a mixed reaction. Arch Moore (R-West Virginia), a member of the House subcommittee on refugees, recalled that he and subcommittee chair Michael Feighan (D-Ohio) ‘practically fell off our chairs’ when they heard Johnson indicate that Cubans would be given executive parole.1 House and Senate judiciary committee reports on the new act had recently ruled that parole should be used as originally intended ‘in emergency, individual, and isolated situations . . . and not for the immigration of classes or groups outside the limit of the law’.2 Although Johnson’s initiative had the support of Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts), the influential chair of the Senate subcommittee on refugees, Florida members voiced suspicions about Castro’s motives and anxiety about the impact on their state.3 Republican Representative William Cramer identified a tension between providing an outlet for dissatisfaction and promoting Cuba’s liberation, noting that Castro would use the programme to expel the untrustworthy.4 This concern was brushed off by the Johnson administration, but the plea of Representative Dante Fascell, a Democrat from Miami-Dade, that the federal government make sure ‘that the burden and the privilege of accommodating thousands of Cuban refugees from Communist tyranny is shared by all America’ was heeded, and new arrivals were encouraged to settle outside Florida.5
