White Lies: The Entry Fiction

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4.8 • 11.8K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

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Summary

When President Carter promised to welcome the men and women arriving on the Mariel boatlift with "an open heart and open arms," he had referred to them as refugees. But technically speaking, they weren't refugees. They were classified as entrants, an immigration status with a peculiar legal standing in the United States. While entrants are physically allowed to enter the country, legally they're still at the border, asking to come in. Their presence in the country is known as a legal fiction — specifically, the "entry fiction." So even as Cubans were disembarking boats in droves through the summer of 1980, they were officially still floating off the coast of Key West. And this immigration status followed them to where they went next: an army base in rural Arkansas. In episode 4, the curious case of the militarized border in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. Want to hear the next episode of White Lies a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Kelli McEvers here.
0:01.6	Some of you might have had some issues with episodes two and three of our most recent
0:07.4	series, White Lies.
0:10.2	Just to be clear, episode two took us back to Havana, Cuba, and told the story of the
0:15.0	Marial Boatlift from the perspective of some of the Cubans who actually made that journey,
0:20.2	and some of the Americans who helped them get here.
0:23.3	Episode three focused on the rumors that surrounded the Marial Cubans almost as soon as they
0:28.6	started arriving in Miami.
0:31.5	Rumors that Fidel Castro was emptying his jails and sending criminals onto the boats.
0:36.3	Anyway, if you didn't hear both of these episodes, it's probably best to go back and
0:41.0	relisten to what is now clearly episode two and episode three before you go on to episode
0:47.6	four.
0:48.6	Anyway, that's the clarification.
0:50.1	We are really sorry for the error.
0:51.7	We thank you for listening and for sticking with us.
0:58.5	Previously on White Lies.
1:00.6	These rumors just sort of went crazy.
1:04.2	You have been invaded by aliens from outer space.
1:08.1	They're psychologically totally not even human.
1:11.4	What did it mean to spend time in prison in Cuba?
1:13.6	The kind of population that is leaving a disgusting society.
1:17.8	They weren't the vagueness murder.
	...

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