MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I rise today as a product of New Jersey
public schools, the son of Cuban refugees whose parents decided to
leave everything behind because they did not like the dictatorship from
the right and did not like what they saw in the Sierra Maestra, as the
Castros were seeking to overthrow that government from the right, and
who fled their own country in order to seek a better life in the United
States. They were the lucky ones. They saw the handwriting on the wall, and
they got out before the true brutality of the Castro regime took hold
in Cuba. When they arrived here, they had nothing more than the promise
of a brighter future and, if not for them, then for their children. In so many ways, it is the quintessential immigrant story; indeed,
the quintessential American story. My mother worked as a seamstress in
the factories of New Jersey. My father was an itinerant carpenter.
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immigrant refugees