Earlier this month, President Obama met with Cuban President Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas, the first time in more than five decades that leaders of the two countries have formally conferred. It was the most visible manifestation of the resumption of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba, which Washington and Havana announced in December.

The rapprochement has also refocused attention on the fifty-year-old American policy that allows Cubans to emigrate to the United States in unlimited numbers, a “privilege” not conferred upon citizens of any other country.

Even before the historic agreement, the number of Cubans coming to the US had significantly increased. In fact, the single largest wave of immigration since the 1959 Cuban Revolution took place not in the sixties and seventies but during the twenty-year period from 1994 to 2013 when the worsening economic hardship in the island led to massive emigration, with a total of 563,740 Cubans being legally admitted into the United States.