POLITICS-CUBA/USA: Delays in Elian Case Upset Migration Pact

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Jun 21 2000 (IPS) - The case of the six-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor, Elián González, may be pushing the migration accords between the United States and Cuba down the road to ruin, after being the only issue in 40 years of hostility that could bring the two countries to the negotiating table.

Officials confirmed in Havana, though without explanation, that the Cuban government had postponed the upcoming review of the agreements – signed in 1994 and 1995 – slated to occur June 26 to 29 in New York.

“In effect, the talks are not going to take place,” said Aymée Hernández, a spokeswoman for the Cuban Foreign Ministry who had previously deflected all questions on the issue, implying that the negotiations were up to the US government.

Richard Boucher, spokesman for the US State Department, said the only reason the Cuban authorities gave when they announced the official decision to postpone the talks was concern about the delays in Elián’s return to the island.

The boy, rescued in the Straits of Florida last November 25 after the boat he had been travelling in sank, has been in the United States for nearly seven months.

Boucher’s statements seem to uphold stories that the Cuban government is unwilling to talk about migration issues until after the boy is repatriated.

The sinking of the boat carrying Elián killed 11 of the 14 passengers, the boy’s mother among them, as they attempted illegally to reach the United States.

Two days later, Elián was left in the custody of his paternal great-uncle, Lázaro González, who, with the support of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami, launched a legal battle to prevent the boy’s repatriation to Cuba, ordered on January 5 by the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS).

The Fidel Castro government blames the shipwreck tragedy on the Cuban Adjustment Act passed by the US Congress in 1966, saying the law encourages clandestine emigration from the island by guaranteeing residency and work for Cubans who are able to set foot in US territory.

Representatives from diplomatic circles point out that the island’s officials had forcefully insisted on the revocation of this law during the bilateral meeting in Havana last December, one of the six-month evaluations of the accords that were meant to ensure “the legal, orderly and safe emigration” of Cubans to the United States.

The apparently indefinite postponement of next week’s talks coincides with the deadline given the US Justice Department and Greg Craig, attorney for Elián’s father, Juan Miguel González, to respond to a new appeal presented last week by Lázaro González in yet another attempt to prevent the boy from leaving the United States.

With the appeal, Elián’s great-uncle is seeking a reversal of the ruling June 1 by the Federal Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which in effect said the minor cannot file for political asylum against the wishes of his sole surviving parent, his father.

Meanwhile, an order emitted by the same court prevents Juan Miguel González, who has been in Washington DC since April, from returning with his son to Cuba while the appeals process is underway.

Legal experts in Havana warn that the relatives in Miami are preparing to take the case to the US Supreme Court if necessary, and that they are playing “the time card” to keep Elián in the United States as long as possible under the law.

“The US government is just as interested in the accords as Cuba, if not more, which is why I believe the postponement (of the bilateral meetings) is a pressure tactic being employed by Castro,” a Latin American diplomat who requested anonymity told IPS.

The source pointed out that the Cuban president had turned the case of the boy into a government affair and predicted that “he will not rest” until Elián is back on the island, though he ruled out a new “migration crisis” in the country, for now.

“I think Castro wants the Clinton government to resolve this problem once and for all,” concluded the diplomat.

For many Cubans, emigration has become one more survival strategy to deal with the economic crisis begun in the early 1990s, which has dramatically hurt the standard of living on the island.

The migration accords, which seek to rein in emigration to the United States, home to more than one million Cubans and their descendents, were reached after the “raft crisis” of 1994 when there was a mass exodus of some 40,000 people from the island nation.

According to the agreements, the United States must grant 20,000 visas every year to Cubans and repatriate undocumented Cubans attempting to immigrate into the US if they are intercepted at sea. Cuba, meanwhile, is obligated to accept the individuals and may not apply reprisals.

Havana, however, has accused Washington on more than one occasion of failing to uphold the accords, which have been the target of sharp opposition from the anti-Castro faction of the Cuban exile community in the United States.