# Jimmy Carter — "Ours is a country of refugees" > [!quote] "Ours is a country of refugees. … We'll continue to provide an open heart and open arms to refugees seeking freedom from Communist domination and from the economic deprivation brought about primarily by Fidel Castro and his government." > — Jimmy Carter, Remarks to the [[League of Women Voters]]' Biennial National Convention, Miami Beach, May 5, 1980 ## Context Spoken at the height of the Mariel boatlift, as roughly 125,000 Cubans crossed to Florida in a matter of months. Weeks earlier Carter had signed the Refugee Act of 1980, the law that created the modern U.S. asylum framework. The "open heart and open arms" line was his real-time response to a mass-arrival emergency — the kind of border surge that later presidents would frame as an invasion. ## Why this matters The receipt that extends the consensus into the refugee-and-asylum domain. Carter folds refugees into the national self-definition — "ours is a country of refugees" — rather than treating them as a threat to be repelled. It is the high-pressure stress test of the tradition: a Democratic president, in an election year, choosing welcome over restriction during an actual border crisis. The contrast with the 21st-century right's "invasion" framing is the entire point of the collection. ## Verification - **Primary source:** [The American Presidency Project, League of Women Voters Remarks, May 5, 1980](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/league-women-voters-remarks-and-question-and-answer-session-the-leagues-biennial-national); contemporaneous coverage in [TIME, "Open Heart, Open Arms"](https://time.com/archive/6857969/nation-open-heart-open-arms/). - **Status:** Verbatim from the official text. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Ronald Reagan - anyone can become an American]] — Carter's successor, the opposing party, restating the same welcome a decade later. - Featured in [[Presidents on the Nation of Immigrants]].