MIAMI – Last year, when Miami schools were flooded with illegal immigrants from Central America, district officials requested and received $5.6 million from the federal government to help cover the added costs.

Now, fearing a massive influx of Cuban students through the same channels, Miami-Dade school district superintendent Alberto Carvalho is back to request “upwards of $40 million” to accommodate them, the Miami Herald reports.

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Since July, nearly 4,000 Cuban students have enrolled in the district and officials expect thousands more to make their way to city schools in coming months.

“Local municipalities and social service agencies are in preparation mode as an estimated 8,000 Cubans stuck in Costa Rica begin to move towards Mexico,” according to the site. “The assumption is that they will end up in the U.S., where Cubans enjoy special immigration status that eases the path to legal residency and citizenship.”

Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado recently warned the school board that “they’re coming, and they want to come to the City of Miami.”

Data published by the Pew Research Center in December show there’s been a 78 percent increase in the number of Cubans entering the United States over the last year, a staggering spike tied directly to President Obama’s December 2014 announcement to improve relations with the country.

And the Cuban Adjustment Act, approved by Congress in 1966, affords Cubans special accommodations when they arrive.

Cubans “hoping to live in the U.S. legally need only show up at a port of entry and pass an inspection, which includes a check of criminal and immigration history in the U.S. After a year in the country, they may apply for legal permanent residence,” Pew reports.

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In Fiscal Year 2015, a total of 43,159 Cubans entered the U.S. through ports of entry, which is a 78 percent increase over the previous year’s total of 24,278. For perspective, only 7,759 Cubans came to America in 2011, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data obtained by the research site.

“The spike in the number of Cubans entering the country came in the months immediately following the president’s announcement,” Pew reports. “From January to March 2015, 9,900 Cubans entered, more than double the 4,746 who arrived during the same time period in 2014.”

The situation prompted Florida senator and Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio to introduce a bill Tuesday to restrict the special benefits for Cubans, many of which Rubio believes are taking advantage of their preferential treatment through the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Rubio told CBS 4 he wants to change the law because today’s Cubans are fleeing economic hardship, rather than political persecution as was the case in the 1960s, and their bilking the system.

“We see abuses already,” said Rubio, whose parents immigrated to America from Cuba in 1956. “We see the abuses happening. You have people coming now, they are collecting social security having never worked in the U.S. and they are moving back to Cuba and their relatives are wiring them the money.

“The system is being taken advantage of and it needs to be addressed,” he said.

Rubio’s bill would require Cubans seeking government assistance to prove they’re political refugees, according to CBS.

In Miami, Carvalho and company estimate it will cost about $2,700 more than what the school district receives from the state to educate immigrant students. With thousands more immigrant students flooding in, the costs are adding up quickly, and the state only funds students who arrive before February, according to the Herald.

“We know that children who are born outside of the country and are recently arrived her present additional challenges,” Carvalho said. “They are by and large poor. They don’t speak the language. They need to go into intensive programs that are costly.”