Memory, Privilege, and the Myth of the Right Way

Before we judge, we should remember

We've all heard it. Some Tio at la ventanita complaining about how "these illegals are jumping the border and take jobs. They didn't come here the right way." It makes sense right? If there is a legal, right way to immigrate into a country, you should follow that countries laws, and start off right.

Except it's not that easy. And for any Cuban exile to be telling you that is ignorant at best. I'm not saying this to put people down. Honestly, I've heard my own family say it more times then once, including my own Mother. They mean it in a way that says, "If we got here and got papers, why can't they?" In a working immigration system, they'd be exactly right too.

However, the US immigration system is woefully broken. Partly by design, partly by negligence.

What does "the right way" even mean?

When people say "the right way", they might picture some single file line at the border, waiting for a green card, with some ticket system akin to a Publix deli. The truth is, there is no right way. The very nature of immigration is messy, complicated, and varies depending on your ethnicity, religion, and political opinion.

Before the 2nd Trump administration began fiddling with the system, these were the legal ways to come to the United states.

Family-based immigration

If you have a parent, child, or spouse that is a US citizen, you're in. However if your connection is more distant (like an aunt, sibling, or cousin), the wait can be 20+ years.

Employment-based immigration

This is often framed as, “They should come here to work legally.” Sounds simple, right? It’s not.

Unless you’ve got a fancy degree, are an Olympic-level genius, or have $800k to invest in a U.S. business, you’re probably out of luck. Most jobs immigrants actually take, like farm work, hospitality, construction, don’t even qualify.

Refugee & Asylum Protections

You can apply for asylum at the border or be resettled as a refugee if you’re fleeing war or persecution, but only if the U.S. agrees you’re “legitimate.”

For decades, Cuban migrants were allowed to stay under “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” laws. Haitians arriving under the same desperation? Mostly detained and deported. (More on this later)

The Diversity Visa Lottery

There’s a literal green card lottery. If your country doesn’t send many immigrants to the U.S., you can enter for a shot at permanent residency. Many Cubans arrived this way in the early 2000s. But countries like Mexico, El Salvador, India? No chance.

Humanitarian and Temporary Protections

There are programs like TPS (Temporary Protected Status), DACA (for Dreamers), and Humanitarian Parole. But these are temporary, fragile, and often political. Subject to the mood of whoever’s in the White House.

Recently, the Trump administration cancelled TPS protections for 500k+ Cubans, Venezuelans, and Haitians who had used the program to come to this country legally.

What’s Not a Legal Path?

- Being poor and looking for a better life? Not valid.

- Fleeing gang violence or hunger? Still not valid.

- Wanting to work and build a better life? Sorry.

There is no “line” for most people.

That’s what makes the phrase “come the right way” feel so disconnected from reality. Especially when you know who it did work for.

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So from this list, how did your family get in? My Mother and her family were allowed to stay under a mix of employment (my grandfather was a doctor) and eventually the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. My Father came over well before Castro to attend military school as a boy, but left Cuba a final time in the late 60's, also being granted permission under the CAA. When I say that I'm lucky to be born in this country, I mean it.

I’ll be real with you: Cuban immigrants didn’t “come the right way.” We came the easy way. And not because we were more deserving or better prepared. But because the U.S. government made it easy for us. That’s the part people love to forget.

For decades, if you were Cuban and you touched U.S. soil, you were allowed to stay. No long asylum interviews, no waiting years in refugee camps, no green card lottery. Just get here, even floating on a door or a busted raft, and you’d be welcomed with open arms. That was the rule under a policy called Wet Foot, Dry Foot, part of the older Cuban Adjustment Act passed in 1966. It was a Cold War move, meant to stick it to Fidel. Let the Cubans in, give them green cards, and show the world how badly people wanted out of communism.

That’s the trick. It wasn’t about compassion, it was about politics. The laws that welcomed us weren’t written out of kindness, but strategy. Cuban migrants were used as evidence in a global ideological battle, symbols of freedom fleeing communism. That’s why we got in. Not because we followed the rules better, but because our existence served a political purpose. And we benefited.

I’ll never forget watching the footage from that day in 2002. A battered freighter full of over 200 Haitian migrants ran aground near the Rickenbacker Causeway in downtown Miami. People jumped into the water, swam to shore, climbed seawalls, ran across lanes of traffic. Just trying to disappear into the city. They were met with police, helicopters, and handcuffs. Every last one of them was caught. Within days, most were in detention awaiting deportation. No asylum hearings, no warm welcome, no benefit of the doubt.

Less than a month later, eight Cubans landed in Key West in a stolen crop-dusting plane. They flew it from Cuba to Key West and parked it like it was no big deal. And what happened? They were interviewed by immigration officials... and released. Just like that. Allowed to stay.

Let that sink in: one group swims for their lives and gets shackled. Another hijacks a Soviet-era biplane and gets a shot at residency.

Same desperation. Different paperwork. One group was treated as a threat. The other as freedom-seekers.

That’s the part that stings. It wasn’t “the right way.” It was just the right nationality. We were handed an exception, a shortcut, and we took it. There's no shame in that. But let’s not pretend we earned something that was, in truth, handed to us on the back of a foreign policy strategy.

And now, decades later, I hear Cubans, even in my own family, talk about “those people” coming over the border, complaining they’re doing it “the wrong way.” Like we didn’t step off boats and walk straight into a green card. Like we weren’t once desperate too.

We weren’t better. We were just lucky. And it’s time we admitted that.

A lot of us grew up hearing about how our parents or grandparents “came with nothing.” And they're absolutely right. Though Cubans coming to the US under the CAA were fast-tracked for residency, it doesn't mean they came with much more then the clothes on their back. They had to start from the bottom. Just like today, charity organizations helped out where they could to house and feed those who were in need.

Look, I’m not saying we didn’t work hard. I know we did. Our parents broke their backs in factories, cleaned houses, fixed cars, worked night shifts. They built lives out of nothing. But so did the undocumented kid picking tomatoes in Immokalee. So did the woman crossing the desert with her toddler on her back. Paperwork didn’t make our struggle more real, it just made it legal.

And legal doesn’t always mean fair.

So when we talk about how we “earned” our place here, we need to be honest. We got help. We got a head start. And pretending otherwise doesn’t make us noble, it just makes us forgetful.

And over time, that mix of struggle and privilege turned into pride, and sometimes into gatekeeping. We didn’t just survive. We started to believe we had done it the “right” way. That we had earned something others didn’t deserve. But memory is tricky. Especially when it’s shaped more by what we want to believe than what actually happened.

When Pride Becomes a Wall

It makes sense that we take pride in what our families went through. How could we not? They uprooted everything. They came here with nothing. They worked jobs they were overqualified for, endured humiliation, raised kids in a language they barely spoke, and still managed to build something out of the wreckage. That pride is real. And it’s earned.

But pride, left unchecked, can turn into something else. Something harder. Something colder.

Over time, that survival story becomes the proof. The pain becomes a badge. The struggle becomes a credential. And suddenly, anyone who comes after is expected to struggle the same way, or worse, to prove they deserve a shot.

That’s when pride turns into gatekeeping.

And there’s something else we don’t talk about nearly enough: we weren’t alone when we got here.

Most Cubans, especially those who landed in Miami, arrived into established communities. Relatives, neighbors, churches, businesses, familiar food, and people who spoke the same Spanish we did. There were networks ready to help: not just charities and government programs, but cousins who knew someone who was hiring, or a friend with a room to rent in Hialeah. Even the city itself was beginning to bend to our needs. Signs in Spanish, ballots in Spanish, news in Spanish. We had somewhere to land.

That matters.

Now imagine crossing a desert into Arizona, or hopping a train through Mexico, and ending up alone in a small town in the Midwest. Undocumented, hunted, with no community waiting for you. You’re not just trying to survive, you’re trying to survive while hiding. You’re not building a life, you’re avoiding being seen.

It’s not the same.

We forget that the system was different. That the rules bent for us. That our pain, while real, came with a shortcut. And once we’ve made it out, we expect everyone else to find the same invisible ladder we were handed, and to climb it faster, with fewer mistakes.

But the ladder’s gone. Or it was never there in the first place.

Worse yet, we start using our parents’ sacrifice as a weapon.

“They did it the right way.”

“They didn’t ask for handouts.”

“They learned English, got jobs, didn’t complain.”

We say it with pride, but also with judgment, as if the next desperate migrant is somehow less worthy if they struggle differently. Or speak differently. Or ask for help.

We turn around, look at the people still in the water, and say, “Swim harder.” And maybe we say it because we’ve forgotten what it felt like to tread water ourselves, to not know if anyone would be there to pull us up.

But our families didn’t make it just because they were stronger.

They made it because the door was open, and there was someone on the other side waiting to catch them.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be proud of what we survived. But we need to stop using that pride as proof of superiority. We need to stop confusing struggle with sainthood. And we need to remember that the next person at the border isn’t our enemy, they’re just on the wrong side of a policy that used to work in our favor.

From Exile to Enforcer

Somewhere along the line, a strange thing happened. A community built on exile, on fleeing oppression, crossing borders, and building from scratch, became one of the loudest voices demanding those doors be shut for everyone else.

Walk through parts of Miami today, and you’ll find Cuban-Americans proudly flying the American flag alongside Trump banners. You’ll hear familiar accents defending harsh immigration crackdowns, cheering on deportations, and parroting the same talking points once used to doubt our own humanity.

“They should’ve stayed in their country.”

“They’re just coming for handouts.”

“They need to do it the right way, like we did.”

That’s the part that stings the most. The people shouting the loudest about illegals are often the same ones who once arrived on rafts, overstayed visas, or were waved through with nothing more than a signature and a smile. People whose very presence here was once considered controversial, even dangerous. People who protested being called criminals now echo that same label at others.

And here’s the truth, some of this shift was by design.

The U.S. didn’t just open the door for Cubans; it rolled out the welcome mat. In doing so, it helped shape a Cuban-American identity that was both grateful and politically useful. We were Cold War pawns, symbols of freedom in contrast to communism. That earned us privileges others didn’t get, and with that came pressure to conform.

Over time, many in the exile community embraced the narrative that they were the model immigrants. Hardworking, grateful, anti-communist, pro-America. Not like “those people.” Not like the ones crossing deserts or riding train tops or lining up at the border with their children. And as our communities gained political and economic power, some of us bought into the myth completely. Not just that we came the right way, but that we deserve to decide who else gets in.

But we forget, we were once the face of the migrant “crisis.” We were the ones people feared would take jobs, change culture, refuse to assimilate. The rhetoric hasn’t changed. The target has.

And now, with the ladder pulled up behind us, we shake our heads at the people still trying to climb.

Seeing a Father, who has been here 20 years working odd jobs to get by, arrested in a Home Depot parking lot should infuriate you. In 1965 Miami, that man could have been your Tio.

Seeing an innocent kid in foster care being arrested by ICE should have your blood boiling. If I remember correctly, Miami lost it's shit in 2000 when INS came to take Elian. Is our collective memory that short?

Our empathy shouldn't shrink with time or distance; it should grow with memory.

Remembering What We Forgot

I’m not writing any of this to tear anyone down. I’m writing it because I love where I come from, and because I think we’ve forgotten what we came from.

We didn’t make it here by being better than anyone else. We made it because of timing, geography, politics, and luck. And once we got here, we made it because of each other. We had family. We had churches and cousins and neighbors and others that spoke our Spanish and made our food and helped us find jobs. We had a city that, whether it wanted to or not, eventually had to make room for us.

That’s not the experience most migrants get now.

I get why it’s tempting to believe we did everything “the right way.” It makes the struggle feel worth it. It helps us make sense of the pain. But when we use that pride to judge the next wave of migrants, we’re not protecting our legacy, we’re dishonoring it.

Because if we really remember what it was like to be exiled, to be hungry, to feel small in a country that doesn’t care who you are, we’d be the first to open the door for someone else.

We’d see our reflection in their desperation.

We’d remember that “the right way” didn’t mean better. It just meant possible.

And maybe, it’s our turn to make it possible for someone else.