Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America

The US granted Cubans unique entitlements for over half a century, including access to welfare benefits and citizenship status, transforming them from agents of US Cold War foreign policy into a politically powerful force influencing national policy. This book reveals the racial and political biases embedded within US immigration policy.

Format: Hardback
Length: 300 pages
Publication date: 02 June 2022
Publisher: Cambridge University Press

For over half a century, the United States has bestowed upon Cubans, one of the largest immigrant groups in the country, a unique set of entitlements. In contrast to other unauthorized immigrants who faced detention, deportation, and lack of legal rights, Cuban immigrants were able to enter the country without authorization and gain access to welfare benefits and citizenship status. This book, the first to comprehensively explore the full range of entitlements granted to Cubans, reveals how successive US presidents, initially privileged to undermine the Castro-led revolution during the Cold War, extended new entitlements even in the post-Cold War era. Drawing on unseen archives, interviews, and survey data, Cuban Privilege sheds light on how Washington, in privileging Cubans, transformed them from agents of US Cold War foreign policy into a politically powerful force influencing national policy. By comparing the exclusionary treatment of neighboring Haitians, the book also discloses the racial and political biases embedded within US immigration policy.

Weight: 722g
Dimension: 158 x 236 x 32 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781108830614