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U.S. President Donald Trump reignited the immigration debate after sharing a table with figures on the percentage of immigrant households receiving some form of social assistance in the United States on his social network Truth Social.
Among the countries mentioned, Cuba once again appears on the list, a detail that does not go unnoticed by a community marked by exile, forced migration, and uncertainty.
The table, titled Immigrant Welfare Recipient Rates by Country of Origin, shows the percentage of immigrant households receiving public assistance based on their country of origin.
In the Cuban case, the figure hovers around 49%, a statistic that Trump presents without much explanation, but which reinforces the idea that immigration represents a burden on the American social system.
However, the context behind those numbers is much more complex than the publication suggests.
The data does not refer to individual people, but to households, which means that it is sufficient for one of its members to receive assistance, for example, a child born in the United States, for the entire household to be classified as a recipient of support.
In many cases, adult immigrants work, pay taxes, and still appear in these statistics.
Additionally, the concept of "social assistance" includes programs such as Medicaid, food stamps, or housing assistance, benefits that are primarily accessed by families in vulnerable situations.
In the case of countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Haiti, or Afghanistan, many migrants arrive in the United States under legal forms of humanitarian protection, such as asylum, parole, or TPS, after fleeing political, economic, or repressive crises.
For the Cuban community, these numbers do not reflect stories of dependency, but rather trajectories of breakage, with families arriving with nothing but the clothes on their backs, having sold everything, traversed jungles, borders, and dangers, and who need initial support while they attempt to rebuild their lives. Many of them manage to integrate into the labor market within a few years, although that progress is not reflected in the table released by Trump.
The president also does not mention that large segments of the population born in the United States receive the same social benefits, nor that multiple studies have shown that, in the long term, immigrants contribute more in taxes than they receive in public aid.
By reducing a complex human phenomenon to a simple list of percentages, Trump shifts the focus back to the numbers and away from the people.
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