The Mariel hopelift

In October 1980, The Post published a special section devoted to the Mariel boatlift, which by summer's end already had begun changing South Florida.

The section was called "Crests of Hope... Troughs of Despair." Most of the 125,000 refugees who landed here came with the hope of a better life, meaning freedom from the oppression of Fidel Castro and the opportunity to find a place in an American society that many viewed with mythical reverence. The despair grew from the reality of their harsh circumstance.

Almost all of them spoke no English and had no money. Many of them had to live where they could. Some slept under stairways in Miami's Orange Bowl and others found housing in West Palm Beach, throughout the blighted downtown neighborhood where CityPlace now stands. Like those who had come a generation earlier, people who had worked as doctors and lawyers in Cuba took jobs as janitors and supermarket clerks to make ends meet. Still, Floridians thought they were looking at a refugee class that would not get very high up the socioeconomic ladder.

Twenty-five years later, the refugee class has disappeared, and a Cuban-American culture has risen in its place. Those who came from the port of Mariel became business owners, police officers, restaurateurs and teachers. Their sons and daughters went to college and earned law and medical degrees. They changed the politics and economy of South Florida. Worries that Castro had emptied his prisons and asylums to fill the Mariel boats proved exaggerated. Fewer than one in 100 of the refugees had criminal records, and many of the so-called offenders got their jail time for opposing Castro's tyranny. Still, the refugees' arrival kicked into high gear the flight of Anglos from Miami-Dade County, and many of them moved to Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast. The demographics of South Florida were forever changed.

Unfortunately, too much about what prompted the boatlift has stayed the same. The United States still tries using embargo politics to deal with Castro, and he still exploits it. When it comes to Cuba, Congress and the White House still abandon common sense for political expediency. Immigration policy is as flawed now as then. Thousands of Haitians who tried to escape tyranny and come with the Marielitos were deported. The government's wet foot-dry foot policy is an irrational standard for granting Cubans asylum, yet they are privileged compared with other groups of refugees.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of those who rode the immigration flotilla was transforming Marielito from a slur to a term of pride. South Florida wouldn't be South Florida without them.