MIGRATION-CUBA: US Law Undermines Accords, Say Authorities

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Feb 22 1999 (IPS) - A law still on the books in the United States, which grants preferential treatment to Cuban immigrants, undermines compliance with the migration accords signed by Havana and Washington and stimulates smuggling of migrants, according to local authorities here.

Cuban officials recently reiterated that some aspects of the agreements between Washington and Havana, designed to normalise the migration flow, had not been fulfilled due to a U.S. law which they said encouraged illegal emigration and smuggling of immigrants.

Ruben Remigio Ferro, the president of Cuba’s Supreme Court, said a U.S. statute dating back to 1966, which automatically grants residency to Cuban citizens who reach U.S. shores, ran counter to the migration accords signed by the two countries in 1994.

Ferro said the law stimulated the action of “unscrupulous people” who violate Cuban waters to illegally remove citizens from Cuba, at times even putting the lives of the emigrants in danger.

As long as the statute according preferential treatment to Cuban migrants who make it to U.S. shores continues to feed the hopes of Cubans, illegal departures will continue, said President Fidel Castro during the recent parliamentary debates in which the Penal Code was modified to reinforce criminal law enforcement.

During a Feb 15-16 extraordinary session, the Cuban parliament decided to classify trafficking in human beings as a criminal offence. The new code provides for a life sentence for those found carrying firearms or endangering the lives of third parties.

Cubans eager to live in the United States but unable to do so legally pay up to 8,000 dollars to traffickers whose speedboats easily evade coast guard patrols, according to U.S. newspaper reports.

In the migration accords, Washington promised not to allow into the country illegal immigrants rescued at sea or who try to enter through other irregular routes.

Havana promised to work on preventing departures in unsafe conditions, such as on makeshift rafts or rickety boats, while both governments are to cooperate on combatting the smuggling of migrants and violence asssociated with illegal emigration.

But U.S. authorities say that in the wake of the bilateral agreement that put an end to the era of the “rafters” – when tens of thousands of Cubans braved the dangerous sea journey to Florida – arose a flourishing business of smuggling Cuban emigrants into the United States.

“We are witnessing a shift in the trend from the traditional rafters toward an organised criminal network of trafficking of persons,” U.S. under-secretary of State John Hamilton said on a visit here in December.

Hamilton, who headed the U.S. delegation to the 10th round of migration talks between the two countries in December, said speedboats were much more difficult to detect than rafts.

At the periodic negotiations to assess compliance with the accords, Cuban authorities have expressed concern over the smuggling of migrants and Washington’s tight restrictions on visits by Cubans to their families in the United States.

According to legal experts in Cuba, three and four year sentences handed down by a U.S. court last week to two individuals implicated in a case of smuggling of persons, in which two adults and a four-year old died, was too slack.

The brothers Abel Arnaldo and Nicandro Morejon admitted that they had charged 14 Cuban immigrants 1,500 dollars each for the trip from the Bahamas to Miami last March. The boat in which they were riding capsized around three miles off the coast of Florida.

The economic difficulties arising from the severe recession that has now entered its ninth year in Cuba have fomented the desire to emigrate, especially to the United States, among certain sectors of the population.