During the Cuban exile many refugees were granted special legal status by the US government, but these privileges began to be slowly removed in the 2010s by then-president Barack Obama.

Their parents sent them into the U.S. in order to keep them from communist indoctrination, with many boys being sent to avoid getting drafted into the Cuban armed forces, and girls being put into the greatly politized Alphabetization Campaign.

The administration of U.S. President Johnson tried to control the numbers it would admit to the U.S. and set some parameters for their qualifications, preferring those claiming political persecution and those with family members in the U.S.

[8][9] From December 1965 to early 1973, under the Johnson and Nixon administrations, twice daily "Freedom Flights" (Vuelos de la Libertad) transported émigrés from Varadero Beach to Miami.

The longest airlift of political refugees,[citation needed] it transported 265,297 Cubans to the United States with the help of religious and volunteer agencies.

Originally many Cuban exiles debated the dialogue's usefulness some were satisfied with the invitation while others doubted the sincerity of the negotiations believing it to be a publicity stunt.

The mass boatlift occurred after a number of Cubans drove a bus through the gates of the Havana Peruvian Embassy and requested asylum.

As the exodus became international news and an embarrassment for the Cuban government, Castro emptied his hospitals and had prison inmates rounded up as "social undesirables",[13][14] and included them among the other refugees.

People were intimidated by these "repudiation meetings" (mitines de repudio), where the participants screamed obscenities and defiled the facades of the homes, throwing eggs and garbage, for hours.

Labeled as "traitors to the revolution," those who declared their wish to leave became the targeted victims of the attacks, their rationing cards were taken from them, their jobs were terminated, or they were expelled from schools or universities.

The majority of refugees were young adult males, 20 to 34 years of age, from the working class: skilled craftsmen, semi-skilled tradesmen, and unskilled laborers.

[15] Task Force members were appointed by the Miami City Commission [16] and it was chaired by urban planner and Cuban community leader Jesús Permuy.

The Task Force adjourned a year later and submitted its findings and official recommendations, called The East Little Havana Redevelopment Plan, to the Miami City Commission and Mayor's Office in 1984.

One reason for this was the LGBTQ associations with the exile movement were met with hostility by the portion of the American public that was anti-LGBTQ and they worried that it would worsen their position in the United States.

[18] Along similar reasoning, there was concern about the alleged criminal nature of the so-called Marielitos, because of Cuba's dispersion of social undesirables into the exile population.

I want to work with all concerned including the Cuban American community to make sure the message goes out to Cubans that putting a boat or raft to sea means putting life and limb at risk... To prevent this from happening again, the Coast Guard has mounted an aggressive public information campaign so people know that vessels... may be stopped and boarded and may be seized.

Individuals who violate U.S. law will be prosecuted in appropriate circumstances.President Clinton, trying to stem the flow of Cuban rafters, pressed a dozen Latin American governments to provide internment camps that officials hoped would prove more attractive to refugees than the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

As a result of bilateral migration accords between the two governments, in September 1994 and May 1995, the status quo of U.S. policy toward Cuban migrants was altered significantly.

Those who did not reach dry land were returned to Cuba unless they feared persecution there, but only those who meet the definition of asylum refugee were accepted for eventual resettlement in a third country.

Though United States law technically barred emigration into the country on grounds of homosexuality, exceptions were made for the exiles to support them as anti-communists.

Many exiles believed their stay abroad was temporary and that most political focus should be on the overthrow of Fidel Castro in actions such as the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

With the Special Period in Cuba political focus began on predictions of the collapse of the Cuban government and aiding internal opposition on the island.

During the emigration of balseros, the exile organization Brothers to the Rescue ran humanitarian missions to save rafters as well as drop propaganda leaflets over Cuba.

[24] Cuban exiles in the United States have consistently been generally more politically active and voted more conservatively than other Latino ethnic groups.

These Cuban Americans were associated with the United States' New Left and they held beliefs that were against the communism of Cuba but also opposed to what they perceived as imperialism by the US.

They produced literature that was critical of both the United States and Cuban Communism, and performed a series of activist actions to draw attention to their cause.

In 1965 their president Luis V. Manrara appeared on WTHS-TV in South Florida to publicly decry a film by the National Educational Television network (NET).

NET's film, Three Faces of Cuba was decried as a pro-communist and anti-American work of art that willfully misled the public to the realities of the Cuban experience.

By the Mariel boatlift the United States had lost its total aggressive foreign policy towards Cuba and instead viewed the island as a nuisance rather than a security threat.

[38] The emigration of Mariel exiles set the precedent of the first homosexual immigrants being allowed into the United States, on the grounds that they were ultimately anti-communist refugees.