Florida; however, the flood of refugees proved so
great that centers were created in Pennsylvania, Wis-
consin, and Arkansas to handle the overflow. Frus-
tration with conditions in these centers and the slow
rate of processing resulted in occasional riots. Fol-
lowing Castro’s ending of Cuba’s open immigration
policy in November, 1980, the flood was reduced to a
trickle.
Simultaneous with the Cuban exodus, thousands
of Haitians boarded aged, rickety boats to escape
abuses they were suffering under the regime of Jean-
Claude Duvalier. In 1981, about twelve thousand
Haitian boat people made it to the Bahamas on
the first part of their journey to south Florida. How-
ever, on the second phase of the journey, most Hai-
tian vessels were intercepted at sea. Passengers were
placed in detention centers then sent back to Haiti,
since most Haitians were viewed as economic refu-
gees. An unknown number of Haitian boat people
died at sea. The worst known incident was when the
bodies of thirty Haitians washed up on the shore of
Hillsborough Beach, Florida.
Within the United States, the differing treatment
between Cuban and Haitian migrants produced
charges of racism and hypocrisy. To reduce bad pub-
licity and the human drama playing in the news,
President Ronald Reagan issued Executive Order
1234 on September 29, 1981, empowering the Coast
Guard to intercept vessels outside U.S. territorial wa-
ters that were suspected of carrying undocumented
immigrants and to escort those ships back to their
countries of origin. Charges of racism continued
throughout the 1980’s, however. The election of
Haitian populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990 re-
duced for a time Haitians’ desire to leave their coun-
try. However, the flood of refugees would resume in
late 1991, after Bertrand was deposed in a military
coup. Of the thirty-six thousand Haitians stopped at
sea, only nine thousand were granted the right to
seek asylum. Tens of thousands of others were able
to land on U.S. shores undetected, however, immi-
grating illegally to the United States.Impact For the United States, the 1980’s witnessed
a larger influx of asylum seekers than did any previ-
ous decade. Granting immigrant status to the large
number of Indo-Chinese refugees helped relieve
Americans’ sense of guilt over their rapid departure
from that region and showed that loyalty would be
rewarded. Granting immigrant status to most of the
Cuban boat people served to embarrass the Castro
regime; however, denial of equal status to Haitians
raised serious issues of discrimination. It also set the
stage for policies later in the decade, when asylum
seekers who had been tortured by Central American
right-wing regimes supported by the United States
were classified as economic refu-
gees, while those from left-wing
nations economically devastated
by U.S. sanctions were classified
as political refugees.
Unlike the first wave of immi-
grants from Cuba and Indo-China,
which had been composed largely
of middle- and upper-class indi-
viduals, the influx of boat people
during the 1980’s sprung largely
from their nations’ lower classes.
In this, the Laotian Hmong repre-
sent an extreme example of jun-
gle mountain dwellers descend-
ing from their thatched huts into
modern U.S. apartments in places
such as Central California. For
them, assimilation into American
society would entail the most diffi-
culties. It would be less difficult
for the Cambodians who formed122 Boat people The Eighties in America
A group of Vietnamese children, including one with an American father (center), poses in
a refugee camp in southern Thailand in 1980.(AP/Wide World Photos)