Record number of Cuban migrants in 2022 dwarfs Mariel exodus and rafter crisis combined

The record number of Cubans arrived in the United States So far in 2022, it has already surpassed the combined records of the Mariel exodus and the Balseros crisis, the two largest migratory waves from Cuba to date, according to the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA).

The CDA reported that 177,848 migrants and asylum seekers from the Caribbean island “had contact” with the United States Customs and Border Protection Agency (CPB) since September 2021.

Last July, 20,496 Cubans tried to enter the US through land or sea borders, according to the most recent CPB report.

“In the first seven months of fiscal year 2022 alone, Cuban migration to the United States has dwarfed the previous two largest waves of migrants—the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the 1994 rafter crisis—combined,” the CDA emphasized. its official page.

More than 125,000 Cubans arrived in South Florida between April and October 1980, after the Government of Fidel Castro opened the port of Mariel, some 25 miles from Havana, to anyone who wanted to leave the island, in a migratory movement unprecedented until then.

Some 14 years later, the dire economic situation on the island after the collapse of the Soviet Union caused another exodus, known as the rafters crisis, in which some 35,000 migrants who jumped into the sea managed to make landfall on US soil. An unknown figure was left on the road in the Straits of Florida.

The current wave is caused by a new economic crisis on the island, one of the worst in its history. Already in 2021, shortly after Cuba reopened its borders closed for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more than 40,000 migrants left the Caribbean country for the United States, just a preview of what would come later.

The figures for Cuban migrants so far in 2022 do not include thousands with tourist visas who enter US territory and remain in irregular status until applying for permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act after spending a year and a day in USA.

According to the CBP report, the number of immigrants from Venezuela and Nicaragua who arrived at the southern border of the United States also increased considerably in July.

“Migrants from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua have increased steadily, representing 37 percent of non-Mexican encounters from fiscal year 2022 to date, compared to 8 percent between 2014-2019,” the entity reported.

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