The transformation of refugee policy: Race, welfare, and American political culture, 1959-1997

The goal of this research is to understand why refugee policy shifted dramatically in the 1970s and to assess the impact of these changes on Cuban and Vietnamese refugees. Instead of focusing on the role of geopolitics as other researchers have, I argue that U.S. domestic racial and ethnic politics and the changing political discourse over welfare was largely responsible for changes in refugee policy. During the 1960s, Cuban refugees benefited from much higher levels of assistance than did Cuban and Vietnamese refugees of the late 1970s and 1980s. I argue that these policy changes along with changes in the global economy have had negative consequences for the adjustment of later arriving refugees.