The Cuban government considered the exodus a sort of social cleansing of the nations' so-called undesirables and organized acts of repudiation against prospective emigrants.

[1] The two countries struggled to reach agreement on a relaxation of the US embargo on trade to permit the export of a select list of medicines to Cuba without provoking Carter's political opponents in the US Congress.

They were not granted legal protection because they were considered economic migrants, rather than political refugees, despite claims made by many Haitians that they were being persecuted by the Duvalier regime.

U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford denied claims of asylum in the United States for Haitian migrants by boat.

[10] Several attempts by Cubans to seek asylum at the embassies of South American countries set the stage for the events of the spring of 1980.

Cuban officials announced through loudspeakers that anyone who had not entered the embassy grounds by force was free to emigrate if another country granted them entry.

"[16] By April 8, 3,700 of the asylum-seekers had accepted safe-conduct passes to return to their homes, and the government began to provide shipments of food and water.

[17] Peru tried to organize an international relief program,[19] and it won commitments first from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela to help with resettlement,[20] and then from Spain, which agreed to accept 500.

[21] By April 11, the Cuban government began to furnish asylum seekers with documents that guaranteed their right to emigrate, including permanent safe-conduct passes and passports.

[22] On 14 April, US President Jimmy Carter announced the US would accept 3,500 refugees and that Costa Rica had agreed to provide a staging area for screening potential immigrants.

The physical assaults and verbal taunts that occurred during acts of repudiation were organized for months and created a sense of fear throughout Cuba.

Many Cubans would enter police stations and state that they engaged in homosexual behavior whether true or not, simply to be granted permission to leave the country.

[10] The United States would label all refugees that would come in during the Mariel boatlift as "Cuban-Haitian entrants," to be approved at the discretion of the Attorney General.

[30] After the arrival of thousands of refugees, Florida Governor Bob Graham declared a state of emergency in Monroe and Dade Counties on April 28.

On June 20 the Cuban-Haitian Entrant Program was established, and Haitians would be given the same legal status as Cuban refugees in the United States during the Mariel boatlift.

[30] Refugees were processed at camps set up in the greater Miami area, generally at decommissioned missile defense sites.

Riots occurred at the Fort Chaffee center and some detainees escaped, an event that became a campaign issue in the re-election defeat of Governor Bill Clinton.

Many had been allowed to leave Cuba for reasons that in the United States were loyalty-neutral or protected, such as tens of thousands were Seventh-Day Adventists or Jehovah's Witnesses.

[38] An early response to address the aftermath of the Mariel Boatlift was the 1983 City of Miami's formation of the East Little Havana Task Force.

[39] Task Force members were appointed by the Miami City Commission,[40] with urban planner and Cuban community leader Jesús Permuy named as its chair.

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.

According to economist Ethan Lewis, the Miami labor market had already seen an increase in "unskilled intensive manufactured goods," allowing it to offset the impact of the Cuban migrants.

This can be attributed exclusively to the "dilution" of the group with the new, less-experienced, and lower-earning Mariel immigrants, meaning that there is also no evidence of a negative effect on wage rates for Cubans living in Miami prior to 1980.

The 1980 Census was also adjusted to include Mariel children to ensure that additional assistance would be available to them through the Miami-Dade County Public Schools via Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

[51] Writing for the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, the two economists Michael Clemens and Jennifer Hunt have claimed that conflicting results could be explained by the changes in the subsample composition of the CPS data.

According to Clemens and Hunt, the compositional effect accounts for the entire impact of the Mariel boatlift on the wages of native workers estimated by Borjas.

With Castro's condemnation and reports that prisoners and mental health patients were leaving in the exodus it was believed by some that Marielitos were undesirable deviants.

The boatlift would also help spark policy demands for English-only government paperwork after Miami Dade County residents voted to remove Spanish as a second official language in November 1980.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump's senior policy adviser Stephen Miller used the boatlift as evidence of the dangers of unchecked immigration.

According to a June 1980 poll conducted by CBS and the New York Times, 71% of Americans disapproved of the boatlift and allowing Cuban nationals to settle in the United States.