---SNIP-- In the years prior, President Jimmy Carter had, like Obama is now, attempted diplomacy with Cuba. Detecting an opportunity, he agreed to accept 3,500 of these refugees. But this figure was quickly surpassed when Miami’s Cuban ex-pats began flooding the port with boats to pick up their families. Rather than discouraging this technically-illegal act, Carter welcomed it, and from April to October of 1980, 125,000 Cubans came to America