MIGRATION-CUBA: Castro Promises New Measures to Stem Exodus

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Aug 4 1999 (IPS) - Cuban President Fidel Castro said Wednesday that his government would continue to do everything in its power to stem a new exodus of emigrants, which would inevitably result in a rupture of the migration accords with the United States.

Cuba is studying a new measure to prevent a repeat of the August 1994 “rafters crisis”, in which tens of thousands of emigrants set out for the United States on rickety boats and makeshift craft.

Rather than the current five-year period during which those who leave Cuba illegally are not allowed to return to the island to visit their families, anyone who left since the 1995 Migration Accord was signed by the United States and Cuba may now face the possibility of never being allowed to return.

“Those who leave in a legal manner will have the right to visit this country whenever they wish,” said Castro, who warned however that those who left illegally may no longer be granted visas to visit the island.

Until the first talks between the Cuban government and a group of emigrants in 1978, anyone leaving the island did so with the understanding that they would not be allowed to return, even for a visit, unless the Castro administration collapsed.

The proposed measure denying visas to those who left illegally would complement a Jul 21 decree regulating the possession and operation of watercraft, banning the construction of makeshift rafts, and providing for stiff fines and the confiscation of property for those found guilty of breaking the law.

A six-hour speech by Castro, which ended in the early hours of the morning Wednesday, focused largely on the history of immigration relations between Cuba and the United States.

Castro also referred to the threat of a new migration crisis between the two countries, and stated that “there is not the slightest possibility of Cuba authorising massive illegal departures” towards the U.S. state of Florida.

Protests against Washington’s approach to managing the problem of refugees attempting to flee Cuba for U.S. shores have peaked in Florida since late June, with a wave of high profile demonstrations, speeches, statements, pamphlets and rallies by Cuban-American civic and political organisations.

Last month, Clinton reportedly told Jorge Mas Santos, son of the late leader of the Cuban exile community in Miami Jorge Mas Canosa, and president of the Cuban-American National Foundation, the most influential Cuban exile organisation, that he would review the migration accords.

But according to Castro, “it is not possible to believe that the president of the United States, a man of recognised intelligence and culture, engaged in such a dialogue, which put him in a nearly servile position.”

Castro added that Cuba was determined to avoid a new migration crisis, which would give the United States a pretext for launching a military invasion. He said, however, that nothing could be done with respect to laws approved in Washington which encourage illegal emigration from Cuba.

The August 1994 exodus of more than 30,000 Cubans ended in an agreement in which Washington pledged to grant a minimum of 20,000 visas a year to Cubans wishing to emigrate to the United States.

And in 1995, the United States agreed to repatriate any undocumented Cubans intercepted in their attempt to enter the United States or the U.S. Guantanamo naval base, a U.S. enclave in Cuba, located 971 kms from Havana.

For its part, Cuba pledged to curb illegal emigration, but without the use of force, and promised not to take reprisals against those who attempted to leave the country illegally.

But the U.S. Cuban Adjustment Law passed in 1962 remains in effect, granting political asylum to all Cubans who make it into the United States, regardless of how they arrived.

From the start, hard-line sectors of the Cuban exile community in the United States have opposed any migration accord between the two countries, while lobbying for the elimination of what is popularly known as Washington’s “wet foot/dry foot” policy.

The situation appeared to becoming even more complicated when the press in Miami recently reported a substantial rise in arrivals of undocumented Cuban immigrants, asserting that the Castro administration planned to throw open Cuba’s borders.

But Castro blamed such versions on a “conspiracy” between the extreme right-wing sectors of the Cuban exile community and the heads of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS).

Since the migration accords were signed, more than 67,000 Cubans have been granted U.S. residency visas, while 2,301 illegal emigrants have been returned to Cuba.

But according to Castro, around 20 percent of those intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard have not been repatriated.

The Miami newspaper the New Herald recently wrote that 1,860 undocumented Cubans had made it to southern Florida since October 1998.

Government sources in Cuba say traffickers charge up to 8,000 dollars to take undocumented Cubans to the United States. Some 40 people are now in custody here on charges of trafficking emigrants.

Castro maintained that those who braved the dangerous seas between Cuba and the state of Florida were those who would never obtain a visa from Washington, as they would become a threat to U.S. society.

“Many are marginal or criminal elements to whom the U.S. Interests Section in Havana would never extend visas, although through the Cuban Adjustment Law they enjoy the benefit of obtaining residency in that nation,” he said.