Credit for banner image above: Thousands of Cubans left the island in improvised vessels in the early 1990s. Photo by Héctor Gabino, El Nuevo Herald, 1993.
| Phase | Dates | Landmark Events | Number of Emigrants |
| Historical exile | January 1959 - October 1962 | The success of the revolution onward through the missile crisis | 248,100 |
| Freedom flights | December 1965 - April 1973 | The closing of the port of Camarioca to the end of the airbridge flights | 260,600 |
| Mariel exodus | April - September 19802 | The opening of the Mariel harbor and closing several months later | 124,800 |
| Balsero crisis | August - September 1994 | The lifting of Cuban restrictions on the migration and eventual U.S. - Cuban migration agreements | 30,900 |
| Post-Soviet migration | May 1995 - January 2017 | Establishment of the "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy, and its rewriting by the Obama administration | 649, 700 (up to 2015) |
Click here for an analysis of the Cuban exodus between 1959 and 2017.