Hello and welcome to this day, a history show from Radiotopia. My name is Jody Avergan.

This is 50 Weeks that shaped America, and this week we are headed to the summer of 1980,

when hundreds of thousands of immigrants came to the United States from Cuba by boat,

many of them picked up by Cubans already living in Miami.

This wave of immigration came to be known as the Mariel Boat Lift, named after the port in Cuba,

Mariam, where Fidel Castro had basically said, hey, Cubans, if you want to leave this country,

this is your chance.

Go to that port and a boat from Miami is going to come and pick you up.

Well, no surprise, it was a chaotic affair and no surprise it was a highly politicized one,

not just because of the Cold War politics of the U.S. and Cuba at that moment, but also because

of the changing rhetoric around immigration in this country.

In fact, you will hear, as we discussed this episode, some of the language that is used around

this incident, and it is very familiar. In many ways, the Mario Boatleth set the template for how

politicians and the media and Americans at large talk about and think about immigrants and

refugees to this country. So, in two parts, Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, crowded boats, a changing Miami, and somehow Bill Clinton works his way into this story. Really fascinating. Here, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter-Jackson of Wellesley. Love that. Hello, Jody. Hey there. See, that's how you do a tease to keep people on the edge of their seat. Bill Clinton is going to show up the top of the second episode. Basically waiting for Godot. Yeah, exactly. But it is kind of amazing that he's part of this and actually, I think, forged a little bit of his longer, longer term politics. But really, this is a Jimmy Carter story.

This is a Miami story.

This is an immigration story.

We haven't really touched on any of those in this series as we go.

And poor Jimmy, you know, I don't think he totally covers himself and glory in this story, though.

Jimmy can't get a break.

I think that's right.

And, you know, some of it is of his own doing, and I think it's worth laying out the context

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