Word: sealift
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...week's end the ragtag regatta had carried nearly 8,000 Cuban refugees to the U.S., thus bringing the total number ferried by the sealift so far to well over 10,000. They come to escape impoverishment, political repression and Castro, and to shape new lives for themselves in the U.S. The sudden influx forced Florida Governor Bob Graham to declare a state of emergency in Monroe and Dade counties-the area stretching from Key West to Miami-and led the U.S. Government to start airlifting refugees from Key West to Eglin Air Force Base in northwest Florida. There...
...more than 2,000 refugees had been brought to U.S. shores. Fidel Castro had unleashed the exodus by opening Mariel to foreign boats and issuing exit visas to those who wanted to leave. The impromptu rescue operation angered and embarrassed the Carter Administration, which held that the sealift was illegal and that the refugees were, at least technically, illegal aliens. To stem the tide, the U.S. Department of State warned that the skippers of the refugee boats could be liable for a $1,000 fine for each exile carried; moreover, their vessels could be seized and held by the Government...
...grant it. Though there seemed little doubt last week that the Cuban boat people would eventually be granted permanent residence, Washington was clearly unhappy with their method of arrival. "What you have here is not a rational process," said State Department Spokesman Thomas Reston of the sealift. "What you have is Castro's solution to the problem...
Thus began the remarkable sealift. In Miami, boat stores quickly sold out of maps of the waters around Cuba. "We're selling anything that floats," said Oscar Rodriguez, manager of B & F marine store. "People are buying lifesavers, lamps, rope-anything, just as long as they need it on a trip to Cuba." Cars with boat trailers clogged the narrow two-lane road from the Florida mainland to Key West; some bore license plates from states as far away as New York. Drowsy Key West, just entering its off-season slumber, bucked to life as drivers steered their bulky...
...Castro suddenly permitted the massive sealift? Among other things, he has managed to rid his country of hundreds of dissidents and slightly relieved the demand for food and other goods in an already strapped economy. For much these same reasons he opened Camarioca, 65 miles east of Havana, as a refugee port in October 1965 and invited Cuban Americans to fetch relatives and friends. By the time he closed the port, about a month later, some 3,000 Cubans had exited by that route. That operation paved the way for the "freedom flights," sponsored by Washington, that eventually brought...