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Rafael Bienvenido Cruz was born in Matanzas, Cuba on March 22, 1939. His father was Rafael Cruz who came to Cuba from the Canary Islands, Spain. His mother, Emilia Laudelina Diaz, was a teacher in Cuba. As was customary in the Hispanic culture, it appears that Rafael may have taken his mother’s surname and referred to himself as Rafael Bienvenido Cruz Diaz. At some later date he dropped the second surname and just referred to himself as Rafael Bienvenido Cruz. Rafael B. Cruz claims that as a youth in Cuba he joined the Cuban Revolution an organization of pro-Communist youths, in support of Fidel Castro against Fulgencio Batista. Rafael also claims that after being captured and tortured by the Batista regime he decided to leave Cuba. Rafael has stated that a family friend bribed an official from the Batista government and was thereby able to get an exit visa to leave Cuba to attend college in the United States. Rafael states that he obtained a student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana in 1957 . The problem with that story is that you didn’t get a student visa from the USA unless you had already been accepted into a university, a process that takes months to complete. It doesn’t seem logical that any University would accept a student who has NO money as he claimed, or who spoke very little English, mainly because immigration law did not allow this. This is the statute in effect at the time Cruz came to the U.S. as a foreign student in 1957:

Such alien shall establish specifically that:

(1) He has a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning;

(2) He is a bona fide student qualified to pursue, and is seeking to enter the United States temporarily and solely for the purpose of pursuing, a full course of study.

(3) He will attend, and has been accepted for attendance by, an established institution of learning or other recognized place of study in the United States.

(4) He is in possession of sufficient funds to cover his expenses or other arrangements have been made to provide for his expenses;

(5) He has sufficient scholastic preparation and knowledge of the English language to enable him to undertake a full course of study in the institution of learning or other place of study by which he has been accepted.

(6) He intends in good faith, and will be able, to depart from the United States upon the termination of his status.

There are NO records of a Rafael Bienvenido Cruz (Diaz) immigrating to the USA during that time from Cuba. ‘Subject of Records’, from Ancestry.com produced a record of a Bienvendio Gregorio Cruz y Lara who was born in Havana on March 22, 1939, and emigrated from Cuba to the United States but he was a different person with a different history and public records indicate that he died in 2012. Rafael also claimed he arrived in the USA in Key West, but the problem is that Key West did not have an immigration port of entry so if he came legally he would have had to arrive in Miami. Rafael then claims that he made his way to Austin, TX, where he enrolled at the University of Texas, Austin in 1957 and worked washing dishes at fifty cents an hour to pay for his education. This too is a problem, as U of T did not allow its students to work full time, and required all students to be fluent in English. Is it possible that Rafael B. Cruz used the stolen identity of Bienvendio Gregorio Cruz y Lara?

All of this would be in Rafael’s ‘Alien File’ if he had one. "A-Files" are individual files identified by a subject's Alien Registration Number ("A-number"). An A-number is a unique personal identifier assigned to a non-citizen. A-Files became the official file for all immigration and naturalization records created or consolidated since April 1, 1944. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz (Diaz) would have been issued an A-number and A-File upon arrival in the USA.