Why more Cubans are choosing to immigrate to Arizona over Florida: They’re being drawn by family, jobs

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The largest exodus of Cubans in history has taken place over the past year, and many of the new wave of Cubans coming to the U.S. are settling in Arizona.

Several thousand Cubans fleeing economic and political turmoil have arrived in recent months to the Phoenix area, the largest-ever influx of Cubans to Arizona, according to interviews with a dozen recent Cuban migrants, resettlement officials, and state data.

They come from different cities and towns, including the capital, Havana. A large number have arrived from Las Tunas, a municipality on the eastern end of the island. Most are reuniting with relatives and friends who resettled in Phoenix within the past 20 years.

They paid $8,000 to $15,000 each for tickets to fly from Cuba to Nicaragua and to pay coyotes to transport them by bus, car, horseback, motorcycle and on foot to travel through Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. border. Once at the border, most crossed without authorization, turned themselves over to Border Patrol agents and then were released shortly after to pursue asylum or legal residency in the U.S. under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act.

They are fleeing constant blackouts, shortages of food, medicine and baby formula, soaring inflation, rising poverty and growing political repression, the migrants said. Cuba is experiencing the deepest economic crisis to hit the country in decades, a product of the COVID-19 pandemic, a failed Communist government and the tightening of U.S. sanctions, experts say.

Many of the Cubans interviewed said they grew up being taught the decades-old U.S. embargo was to blame for Cuba’s long-standing economic problems. Now they fault Cuba’s Communist government.

Defecting to the U.S. has been difficult in the past, but Cubans who can arrange the expensive passage are having no trouble migrating now.

“Our country is going through the worst economic situation ever,” Arasi said in Spanish. The 37-year-old Cuban woman asked that her last name not be published for fear it could cause problems for her family still in Cuba. She arrived in Phoenix June 30 after an 18-day journey from Cuba to the U.S. through Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico.

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In Mexicali, she crossed the border into the U.S. during the day with a group of migrants. They waited under a surveillance camera until Border Patrol agents arrived. They were taken to a Border Patrol station in Yuma, where they were processed and then driven by U.S. immigration authorities to Phoenix, where Arasi said she was released at a shelter. Her husband, who had arrived in Phoenix three months earlier, picked her up.

Roberto Roque Rodriguez shows off a photo on Feb. 21, 2023, of his time working as a taxi driver in Cuba. He left Cuba and now helps out at his brother’s store, which is located at a Glendale strip mall with several other Cuban-owned businesses.

“We’ve always been in an economic crisis, but it’s worse now. There is a lot of shortages, a lot of need,” Arasi said.

A pound of pork in Cuba cost 25 pesos, about $1, a year ago, she said. Now the same amount costs 10 times as much, she said.

In Cuba, Arasi was a professional. Her husband ran his own business. They have applied for asylum to remain in the U.S. and are in the process of getting work permits. She was sitting in a booth that sells Valentine’s Day gifts in a market on the west side of Phoenix, where she volunteers as an assistant.

To pay for their trip to the U.S., they sold all of their belongings in Cuba but borrowed most of the money from friends in the U.S. A Cuban friend living in Phoenix for years encouraged them to come to Arizona.

“He said the economy was strong and there were a lot of jobs,” Arasi said.

On their way:Migrants from many countries are arriving at the US-Mexico border. Here’s why

More Cubans searching for homes outside Florida

The Cubans who have come to Arizona are among the more than 300,000 Cubans who have arrived through the U.S.-Mexico border since February 2022, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. That number surpasses the exodus of Cubans who fled during Castro’s Communist revolution in the early 1960s.

The arrival of so many Cubans in Arizona is unusual. The state’s Latino population is predominantly of Mexican descent. Historically, Florida is the main destination in the U.S. for Cubans.

The Miami area, home to the nation’s largest Cuban population, is saturated with migrants who recently arrived from Cuba and other Latin American countries, experts say.

As a result, a growing number of Cubans are settling in cities such as Phoenix, where many are joining friends or family who arrived in earlier waves. The cost of living is comparatively more affordable, and jobs are easier to get, according to interviews with Cuban migrants, and resettlement officials.

“What we’re seeing is individuals fleeing Cuba primarily to join their family in Phoenix or other areas where their family is living,” said Joanne Morales, director of refugee programs at Catholic Charities.

A family of Cuban immigrants, many from Vazquez, Cuba, gathers to roast a pig and celebrate a birthday on Jan. 29, 2023, in Laveen.

Besides the Phoenix area, the Las Vegas, Louisville, Kentucky, and Houston areas also are resettling growing numbers of Cubans coming to the U.S., Morales said. Outside Miami, the areas of New York City and Los Angeles, along with the Tampa, Orlando, Naples and Fort Myers areas in Florida, are home to the largest concentration of Cubans, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization.

The organization ran a program that helped resettle Cubans seeking asylum in the U.S., with funding from the federal government. The program started in 1994 and ended in 2017, when former President Barack Obama terminated what was called the “wet foot, dry foot” policy. That policy allowed Cubans who touched U.S. soil to remain in the U.S. rather than be sent back to Cuba. The Obama administration ended the policy as part of the normalization of relations with Cuba, which complained that the policy encouraged Cubans to migrate.

Nearly 8,000 Cubans were resettled in Arizona during that period, according to data from the Arizona Department of Economic Security, Refugee Resettlement Program.

Migration from Cuba to the U.S. declined after 2017 but skyrocketed in 2022, when Arizona began receiving record numbers of Cubans.

In fiscal year 2022, nearly 2,400 Cubans who have arrived in Arizona have been designated as refugees, up from zero the year before, according to Arizona Department of Economic security data. Another 1,178 Cubans in Arizona have received the designation this year. The designation makes them eligible for cash and medical assistance for up to 12 months from their arrival date, said Tasya Peterson, a department spokesperson.

The sharp increase in Cubans seeking refugee assistance provides an indication of the size of the influx of Cubans in Arizona. It does not include Cubans who did not reach out for services, Peterson said. So the actual number of Cubans who have recently arrived in Arizona is higher.

The sudden influx has strained local resettlement agencies, Peterson said. And Arizona’s tight market is making it hard to find affordable housing.

“Housing is an ongoing challenge that continues to pose barriers and instability in the safety and security of all refugees and other eligible beneficiaries,” Peterson said in a written statement.

Several Cubans who were interviewed said they are frustrated by the long wait to receive work permits from the federal government.

Peterson said the wait is over nine months, “which has created an obstacle for clients accessing employment services and entering the workforce.”

The flow of Cubans to Arizona is expected to continue. Many Cubans already living in Phoenix say they are scrambling to fill out the paperwork to sponsor relatives and friends in Cuba who also want to come to the U.S. under a new policy announced by the Biden administration in January.

Roberto Roque Rodriguez shows off some of the Cubano wares inside Botanica Cubana Oshun, which is located at a strip mall with several Cuban-owned businesses in Glendale, on Feb. 21, 2023.

Under that policy, up to 30,000 humanitarian visas will be given to people in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela with sponsors in the U.S.

Most of the humanitarian visas are expected to go to Cubans because they are being distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Cubans tend to have more ties to family members in the U.S. with money and knowledge of how the immigration system works than Haitians and Nicaraguans, so they will likely end up with the bulk of the visas, analysts say.

“Cuban immigrants in the U.S. are well connected,” said Ariel Ruiz, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They have a higher level of social capital in the U.S. than other immigrants. They tend to be well-informed on U.S. policy and U.S. politics, and these combined factors make them more readily available to be sponsors.”

Unlike other immigrants, most Cubans who reach the U.S. can apply for legal permanent residency after living in the U.S. for one year and one day under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, a law passed in response to Cubans fleeing the communist regime in Cuba.

Biden’s new policy is intended to get control of the humanitarian crisis at the southern border by offering humanitarian visas that allow asylum seekers to fly directly to the U.S. and enter the country legally rather than making the dangerous journey through Mexico and crossing the border illegally.

At the same time, the Biden administration has begun quickly expelling to Mexico Cuban migrants who cross the southern border illegally, using the pandemic-era border policy called Title 42. Until January, almost all Cubans who crossed illegally were exempted from Title 42 expulsions and allowed to remain in the U.S.

Now Cubans who arrive at the border without authorization to enter legally face immediate expulsion to Mexico under Biden’s new policy. As a result, the number of Cuban migrants who crossed the southern border has plummeted, from nearly 43,000 in December to 6,400 in January, according to CBP data. Of the 6,400 Cubans apprehended by border officers in January, 40% were expelled, compared with fewer than 0.10% the month before, the data shows.

New reality at the border:Once welcomed into the US, Cubans arriving at southern border now expelled under new Biden policy

‘No comparison’ to latest wave of Cuban migrants

Cuba’s economy plummeted by 11% in 2020, the country’s worst economic crisis in decades, said Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

Cuba’s failed central economic system, and the loss of revenue and investment from Cuba’s major trading partner, Venezuela, which is experiencing its own economic crisis, were among the factors.

The pandemic, during which Cuba closed its borders, deepened the crisis, Duany said.

Tough sanctions imposed in 2017 and 2020 by President Donald Trump’s administration against Cuba, which reversed actions by the Obama administration, restricted remittances and blocked travel to Cuba, also contributed to its economic downturn, Duany said.

The crisis prompted the largest protests to take place in Cuba in 60 years in July 2021. The government responded with arrests and imprisonment of political dissidents that also helped fuel the mass exodus, Duany said.

Cuba’s economy is slowly starting to recover, but in October, Cuba was hit by a major hurricane, Ian, which devastated parts of the country.

In November 2021, Nicaragua eliminated visa requirements for Cubans. That prompted speculation that Cuba’s regime had enlisted the help of Nicaragua’s socialist government to help Cubans leave, Duany said. Nicaragua has since become the main “gateway” for Cuban migration to the U.S. through Central America and Mexico, he said.

Cuba has historically used migration as an “escape valve” during hard economic times, Duany said. Encouraging dissidents and disaffected Cubans to leave helps keep the Communist regime in power. It puts pressure on the United States for better relations with Cuba, Duany said.

Ubisnel Hernandez (left), 28, talks with a customer as he cuts the hair of Yusniel Ballester inside a barbershop at 64 Plaza shopping mall, a strip mall with several Cuban-owned businesses in Glendale, on Feb. 21, 2023. Hernandez and Ballester are both Cuban immigrants.

Several Cuban migrants also said they believe Cuba’s Communist regime wants people to flee to the U.S. because the money they send to relatives at home in the form of remittances will help prop up the economy.

The closing of Cuba’s border during the pandemic created pent-up demand to migrate, said Michael Bustamante, a history professor who chairs the Cuban and Cuban-American Studies department at the University of Miami.

The Trump administration’s closing of the U.S. Embassy in Havana in 2017 after claims of a series of mysterious “sonic attacks” against more than 20 American diplomats also shut down legal migration, Bustamante said. Until then, the embassy was giving out about 20,000 visas a year for Cubans to emigrate to the U.S.

“So that explains why there’s kind of this pent-up demand of people who want to leave,” in addition to the economic crisis, Bustamante said.

The sonic attacks have since been called into question, and the U.S. embassy in Havana again began accepting visa applications in January, coinciding with the Biden administration’s new policy.

Since the start of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959, a steady flow of migrants has streamed from Cuba to the U.S., but “there is no comparison” to the latest wave, Bustamante said.

About 250,000 Cuban refugees fled between 1959-1962; 260,600 Cubans fled during the Freedom Flights from 1965-1973; 125,000 Cubans came during the Mariel boatlift exodus from April to September 1980; and 31,000 arrived during the Balsero crisis from August 1994 to September 1994, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

The nearly 221,000 Cubans who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022 amounted to 2% of Cuba’s 11 million population, he pointed out.

Another 112,600 have arrived during the first four months of fiscal year 2023, which started in October, although the number crossing has dropped sharply because of Biden’s new policy.

“This is the largest surge in Cuban migration to the United States since 1959,” Bustamante said.

Changes:Cuban refugees have long been allowed into the US. What’s happening now?

Migrant from Cuba: Now ‘I can help my family’

On a recent Sunday, about two dozen Cubans gathered in a backyard in Laveen for a birthday celebration. They sat at tables playing dominoes, or stood in small groups drinking beer and chatting in Cuban-tinged Spanish while an entire pig roasted on a spit over a bed of coals. The hosts served black beans, white rice and boiled yuca, traditional Cuban foods.

They all were from the same part of Cuba, Las Tunas, on the eastern end of the island, and many had arrived in the Phoenix area within the past year. Among them was Eddy Cordova, a 51-year-old pastry chef who came in July from the town of Vazquez in Las Tunas.

Cordova severely injured his head on the journey to the United States. Smugglers in southern Mexico transported him and other migrants by boat through the Pacific Ocean from Tapachula to the state of Oaxaca to evade immigration authorities. During the 14-hour trip, his head pounded on hard plastic water containers at the front of the boat on every large wave, Cordova said.

Doctors at a hospital in Phoenix operated on his brain twice to drain fluid after he got very sick shortly after arriving in the U.S., Cordova said.

Cordova turned his head and pointed at a long scar on the left side of his shaved head where doctors operated.

Eddy Cordova shows the scar on his head on Jan. 29, 2023, in Laveen. Cordova was severely injured on the journey from Cuba to the U.S. when his head pounded on hard plastic water containers in the boat that he and other migrants were placed in by smugglers. Doctors at a hospital in Phoenix operated on his brain twice to drain fluid after he arrived in the U.S.

Cordova left behind his wife and a 16-year-old son. He found work packing fruit for a local company. A cousin in Phoenix is applying to sponsor his wife and son so they can join him in Arizona.

Was the trip to the U.S. worth a head injury and risking his life?

“At the end of the day, yes,” Cordova said in Spanish. “I’m now in a country (the U.S.) where I can help my family. Cuba is experiencing a horrible economic crisis.”

Reach the reporter at daniel.gonzalez@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: More Cuban migrants are going to Arizona instead of Florida