Coming Aboard

The number of refugees entering the U.S, has more than tripled during the past four years. The big increase started in the wake of the war in Indo-China, first with the evacuation of U.S. supporters, then the rescue of the Vietnamese boat people (about 75% of the 62,000 Indo-Chinese admitted during fiscal 1979) and finally the starving fugitives from Cambodia (about 20% of the 1979 total). A second large new group comes from the Soviet Union, a total of 77,000 Jews, dissidents and others since 1977.

Before Castro came to power in 1959, there were only about 50,000 Cubans living in the U.S. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimates that at least 750,000 Cubans have settled here over the past 20 years. Because the number is determined by those aliens who register each January, an INS spokesman admits: "We know that it is low," It might even be as high as 1 million—with some 30,000 more new joining their ranks.