The California Attorney General's Office report notes that during the 1970s and 1980s, under the guise of the Russian-Jewish refugee program, "the KGB emptied their prisons of hard-core criminals, much like Cuban dictator Fidel Castro did during the Mariel boatlift of 1980." The 1989 Lautenberg Amendment expanded refugee admissions from the Soviet Union to up to 50,000 per year. This was followed, in 1991, by provisions for legal immigration from the now independent states of the former USSR.
Dubbed by Russian criminals as "the big store," the United States is now home to criminal gangs from all 15 republics. Since the mid-1970s, the hub of Russian organized crime in the U.S. has been the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, New York, known as "Little Odessa." From this center of emigre activity, they have spread their operations throughout greater New York, to Boston, Phila-delphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, and Seattle.