Mr. SAYRE. I don't think the turnaround has been significant, and the Cuban economy is utterly dependent on economic assistance from the Soviet Union.

Chairman KENNEDY. What is the cost of sugar?

Mr. SAYRE. They are trying to maintain the world price of sugar at 212 cents per pound, probably, slightly more than the cost of production of sugar in Cuba because it is a natural product. We do not have figures on the actual cost of production of sugar in Cuba. Cuba has agreements with the Soviet Union which provide for a higher price of sugar-6 cents on the deliveries to the Soviet Union, but it is not clear that Cuba gets 6 cents because in the management of the economy the Soviet Union adjusts the price of products sent to Cuba to help compensate for the higher price of Cuban sugar.

Chairman KENNEDY. Can you give us any idea about the GNP of Cuba over the last 4 or 5 years? How it has fluctuated?

Mr. STEVENSON. I have seen estimates recently that there has been a rate of growth last year of 2 percent, but it is difficult to estimate. Chairman KENNEDY. I don't see why. I visited in Hong Kong and got estimates on Communist China. You people must have some close estimation on what has been happening in Cuba. We have it in regard to every other country in the world. We must have that kind of information. That is basic to some of the assumptions we are making about the internal situation.

Mr. STEVENSON. Our best estimate is 2 percent for 1965.
Chairman KENNEDY. What is the GNP?

Mr. STEVENSON. About $700 million.

Chairman KENNEDY. The gross national product?

Mr. STEVENSON. I'm sorry, that is the total trade. I would have to check that.

Mr. SAYRE. We can supply that figure for the record, Mr. Chairman (see appendix, exhibit 2).

Chairman KENNEDY. There are a number of different airlines flying into Cuba, is that correct?

Mr. SAYRE. Yes, sir.

Chairman KENNEDY. And one of the principal airlines that takes refugees out is the Spanish airline; is that correct?

Mr. STEVENSON. Iberia Airline is making one flight a week.

Chairman KENNEDY. What are the other airlines that are transporting refugees out of Cuba, and what is the volume of movement? Mr. STEVENSON. The Iberia Airline-once a week-on DC-8 jets. This has only been going on for a month.

Chairman KENNEDY. You are not suggesting, are you, that they have just been carrying out refugees?

Mr. STEVENSON. They have been carrying out recently something over a hundred passengers per week on the jets, mostly refugees. The other movement is by Cubana Airline to Mexico City and they have been running 2 flights a week, erratically, carrying out perhaps 100 refugees per week. It varies. Those are the only other flights other than the Refugee Airlift, which we operate.

Chairman KENNEDY. Can you give us some idea of the number of refugees that have gone into Spain and Central America? I would be interested in the last 2 years.

Mr. STEVENSON. I would think it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 per month who went to Spain in 1965-about 6,000 over the past 2 years. There are certainly 20,000 to 35,000 Cuban refugees in Spain at this time-many being Spanish citizens.

Chairman KENNEDY. Is Spain about the only European country receiving them?

Mr. STEVENSON. Yes.

Chairman KENNEDY. What is your estimate of refugees who have gone to Mexico?

Mr. STEVENSON. We did some calculations on that figure last year and it was running 300 a month to Mexico. Roughly, 3,000 per year. The overall average before the refugee airlift started was 900 a month moving to the United States from Spain and Mexico.

Chairman KENNEDY. Have you any idea as to how many stay in Mexico and how many go down to the other Central American countries?

Mr. STEVENSON. Most of them who have gone to Mexico in the last couple of years have come on to the United States. Very few have gone to other countries in Latin America and Ceneral America. Most of the North and South American countries have groups of Cuban exiles.

Chairman KENNEDY. What is the attitude of these countries on receiving these refugees?

Mr. STEVENSON. Recently, when we were arranging for the airlift, we asked the Council of the Organization of American States to consider the possibility of cooperating in this endeavor on two occasions. We have had one response from Costa Rica. Working through the Swiss Ambassador in Havana we were able to arrange for a flight of 106 persons. There are 400 to 500 Cuban exiles in Costa Rica. We are working with two other countries now who have shown an interest in similar arrangements, and we hope soon to arrange two more movements. I would estimate that several thousand, perhaps, can be moved.

Chairman KENNEDY. What kind of security measures are taken, if any, either by us or by the Organization of American States, in reviewing the background of refugees who leave Cuba?

Mr. SAYRE. Mr. Chairman, I believe I can supply you with information that will explain the whole procedure to you.

Chairman KENNEDY. In the memorandum of understanding-are there any considerations in regard to political prisioners?

Mr. SAYRE. Mr. Chairman, we were interested in basically two categories of persons coming out of Cuba. The first category was the one you mentioned in your statement, and we thoroughly agree with you on this-reunited families. The second one is the one you expressed a strong interest in-political prisoners.

We proposed to the Cuban Government that political prisoners get second priority status and that they be permitted to depart.

Chairman KENNEDY. Do you have an estimate on the number of political prisoners?

Mr. STEVENSON. Our estimates run from 18,000 to 30,000. I might add that we are trying to compile an index of the political prisoners in Miami in hopes that we might be able to crack the problem someday.

Mr. SAYRE. We continue to hope that the Castro regime will permit the second category of people to come to the United States. We are prepared to go ahead with an arrangement on that if he does agree, but he was not willing to put it in the memorandum of understanding, and we could not reach an agreement with him on this subject.

Chairman KENNEDY. What efforts are we making at the present time?

Mr. SAYRE. At the present moment we are not taking any initiative through the Swiss Embassy in Havana to make such an arrangement because the Castro regime has made quite clear to us that it will not agree to it.

Chairman KENNEDY. Did they give any reasons?

Mr. STEVENS. Essentially their position is that these people are not political prisoners but counterrevolutionaries, and by this definition they don't see any reason from their point of view that they should be given any special consideration.

I might say that the Swiss Ambassador in Havana is very much interested in this problem and is alert to making any approach that he can to push it.

Chairman KENNEDY. What has been the role of the Red Cross in these negotiations?

Mr. STEVENSON. We tried to suggest to them that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be a good agency for handling this whole refugee movement, but the Cuban Government said they did not wish it.

Chairman KENNEDY. You made a general comment in your testimony with regard to the present attitude of the Cuban Government as being

Mr. SAYRE. The present attitude of the Cuban Government?

Chairman KENNEDY. With respect to developing a list of people permitted to leave.

Mr. SAYRE. They have carried out all of the provisions of the understanding, and there has been no major difficulty on carrying out the precise provisions of the understanding that I am aware of.

Chairman KENNEDY. Do you know how they develop their list? Mr. STEVENSON. They receive applications and process them. There is no special system. The word is out, and if you want to leave you apply to the Department of Immigration down there.

Chairman KENNEDY. What is the timelag between submitting an application and departure?

Mr. STEVENSON. It varies. Some people have applied and got out quite readily, and others have applied early in the game and are still waiting. There is a fallout for which we have no explanation. Of course, in the beginning it was perhaps a month to 6 weeks. I think less than that. In the beginning perhaps 3 weeks to a month. Now it keeps getting longer-probably 6 weeks to 2 months. We don't know who has applied until they actually give us the list.

Chairman KENNEDY. From your conversations with the refugees who are coming to this country, would you give us some kind of profile on these people?

Mr. STEVENSON. By age group? Of course. compiled by the Cuban Refugee Center in Miami.

These figures were
Thirty-one percent,

have been up to 17 years of age, 36 percent from the ages of 18 to 45, 28 percent from the ages of 46 to 64, and 5 percent are 65 and over.

By occupations, professions, semiprofessions, and managerial 9 percent; clerical and sales 12 percent; skilled 5 percent; semiskilled and unskilled 6 percent; services 4 percent; agriculture and fisheries 2 percent; students, children, and housewives 62 percent. I have some other figures on the total names received. Would that be of interest? Chairman KENNEDY. Yes.

Mr. STEVENSON. The total names received from Cuba are 28,963; total names sent to Cuba are 17,674-the latter figure represents where we put the list together and come up with a joint list.

Chairman KENNEDY. What do you mean by a "joint list"?

Mr. STEVENSON. As provided in the Memorandum of Understanding, the Cubans supply names of people who want to leave who are in the first category. We also are accumulating names, and when we get the Cuban list we check them against our names and we make from this a joint consolidated list which we return to Cuba. From the joint list they draw their embarkation list.

Chairman KENNEDY. Are they cooperative in adjusting to our list, including those people we feel should be on the list?

Mr. STEVENSON. This is hard to answer, but I would say that in some specific cases where we have asked them they have been cooperative; for example, with regard to the parents of unaccompanied children. I am sure the representative from Health, Education, and Welfare will address himself to this, but in this particular area we are all eager to get these parents out to join their children, and we took the iniative in sending a list of the parents to the Cubans. They agreed to accept it and work from it and just recently we have been getting the names of these parents on embarkation lists, but it has taken quite some time. That is why I was hesitant in answering that. It remains to be seen.

Chairman KENNEDY. Would you elaborate as to whether you feel the Cubans are cooperating, and are those on our list included on Castro's list?

Mr. STEVENSON. Mr. Chairman, just utilizing the procedure of the Memorandum of Understanding we are ahead of the flights. In other words, there are several thousands names down there already matched up and ready to come. So we haven't really had much occassion to try to send additional names to the Cubans with the exception of these parents. On the unaccompanied children we have made special efforts to get their cooperation, and we are quite prepared to press ahead on that list.

Chairman KENNEDY. Would you give us an opinion as to why Castro went ahead with the Memorandum of Understanding?

Mr. SAYRE. It has been the policy of the Castro government ever since it came to power to export its opposition.

Chairman KENNEDY. Well, that runs contrary to what you said in your statement.

Mr. SAYRE. Except for the political prisoners. He has been exporting his potential opposition and people who might give him trouble or form the basis for giving him trouble.

Chairman KENNEDY. You are not going to include the very high percentage who are women and children?

65-505-66-pt. 1-2

Mr. SAYRE. In that sense, I would suppose, with respect to the children who do not fall in the military age, he was willing to permit them to depart with their parents. I wouldn't exclude women from the category of people who are capable of giving trouble.

Chairman KENNEDY. Moving from that point, about being willing to export those who give trouble.

Mr. SAYRE. What triggered this action is the explanation that I had in part of my prepared statement. Ideally, Castro has proposed to let all Cubans who want to leave for the United States depart. I don't know whether he expected the United States to accept this proposal. There is a reason to believe that he did not. We promptly accepted the proposal in the fulsome nature in which he made it. That is the reason we went back and said, in effect, that we assume this also included political prisoners, at which time he began to make exceptions.

He also excepted persons who had skills, because I think he belatedly realized that if all of the people who wanted to leave were permitted to leave he would be without teachers and doctors and other people to keep the economy going.

He also excepted people of military age. These exceptions that he insisted on, once we got into the negotiations, tended to indicate that he didn't expect the United States to accept his proposal. Having made the proposal he, of course, has gone through with it, with the exceptions stated.

Chairman KENNEDY. What is the attitude of the Department in regard to the adjustment of status for Cuban refugees?

Mr. SAYRE. As far as the Department of State is concerned, these people are in the United States in a parole status. We have not worked out any proposals or considered any proposals for changing that status. They are, in fact, generally employed and making contributions to the economy of the United States.

Chairman KENNEDY. My question is, what is the State Department's position on the adjustment of status for Cuban refugees? Mr. STEVENSON. We favor it.

Chairman KENNEDY. It is helpful to have the Department's position in the record.

Mr. ABRAMS. We have been informed that the number of people on the list of Health, Education, and Welfare is approximately 900,000 Cubans in Cuba whose relatives in the United States have filed papers to get them on the U.S. list, and that a refined list would bring the number down to some 750,000.

Have you an indication of how many people are on the Cuban list? Mr. STEVENSON. Not at the moment. We haven't really been able to get any. At one time we did hear a figure of 125,000.

Mr. ABRAMS. Is it reasonable to expect that this 750,000, which the Health, Education, and Welfare has, would be on the Cuban list within the next few years?

Mr. STEVENSON. I just don't think that I could give an answer on that one.

Mr. ABRAMS. We proposed that, if the Cuban list matches the American list in numbers, we are prepared indefinitely to continue this way of taking Cuban refugees into the country. I see no indication