POLITICS-CUBA/US: Migrants – Yesterday by Raft, Today by Airplane

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 27 2001 (IPS) - A US court ruling that facilitates legal residency for Cuban immigrants who arrive in the United States by air and hold falsified documents has become another sticking point in the always-tense Cuban-US relations.

The matter was the centre of debate in the round of semi-annual migration talks held Tuesday in New York, reported the Cuban daily ‘Granma’, the mouthpiece of the governing Communist Party, citing United Nations sources close to the negotiations.

The Cuban delegation maintained that expanding the benefits established under the Cuban Adjustment Act to include residency rights for Cubans entering the country by air and with fake passports, as resolved in April by a court in the US state of Virginia, contradicts the bilateral treaties on migration signed in 1994 and 1995.

The Migration Appeals Court of Falls Church, Virginia, ruled that such immigrants, estimated to number 3,000, are protected by the Cuban Adjustment Act, a US law that paves the way for permanent residence, according to a report in The Miami Herald.

The decision against the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), which had sought to maintain these Cuban immigrants in legal limbo and without the right to permanent residence, reinforces the new tendency of illegal trafficking of people from Cuba into the United States, which until recently occurred almost exclusively by sea.

In the past few months, more than 100 Cubans entered the United States via air, after first making a stop in Chile, and bearing false passports. The immigrant smuggling ring that organised their passage is calculated to have made a half million dollars in the operation, according to press reports.

This sort of journey to reach the United States may also pass through other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“They organise everything here. You leave legally for a third country and they give you the false documents to travel to Miami. On board the plane you tear up your old documents and present yourself before the immigration authorities,” a woman whose son made the trip in April told IPS.

The Cuban emigrant, 27, had obtained official permission to take part in an educational course abroad. “We paid half here and the other half when my son reached the rest of our family in Miami. In total, 8,000 dollars,” said the woman.

Rumours about the illegal sale of documents spread through Havana earlier this year when migration authorities stopped issuing new passports to applicants.

Cubans have been gaining entry into the United States through a third country for years, but only recently has it become a route for what has been dubbed “people-trafficking,” a trend that is on the rise.

Diplomatic sources in Havana commented that in the round of US- Cuban talks this week – the sixteenth such session, and the first during the presidency of George W. Bush – both governments confirmed their interest in maintaining legal and orderly migration, despite growing political tensions between the two countries.

The Cuban-US migration agreements establish that Washington must grant 20,000 visas annually to Cuban emigrants and repatriate all who intercepted in their attempts to reach US territory illegally.

At the same time, the Adjustment Act grants Cubans in the United States the right to residency one year and one day after their arrival, even if they entered the country illegally.

The government of President Fidel Castro has charged that the US legislation encourages illegal emigration from the Caribbean island and, as a result, blames it for the deaths that often occur as Cubans try to navigate the Florida Straits in a bid to reach the US soil.

Washington, meanwhile, is concerned that another massive exodus from Cuba, similar to the one involving 30,000 people in August 1994, would be a threat to US national security.

Since January, the US Coast Guard has returned just over 300 people to Cuba, according to official sources in Havana. The total number of Cubans repatriated since 1994 is approximately 5,000.

From 1995 to 2000, 133,800 Cubans were the beneficiaries of “permanent emigrant” visas to live in the United States.

The US has complied with its promise to provide 20,000 visas a year, but it is not enough to meet the demand of hundreds of thousands of people who fill out application forms at the offices of the US Interests Section in Havana.

For the first US visa lottery held in Cuba in 1995, 130,000 people filed applications. In the second, in 1996, there were 438,000, and in the third, in June 1998, the total reached 541,100.

Officials and experts agree that the rise in interceptions of would-be Cuban emigrants at sea has led to a decline in attempts to reach the United States aboard precarious boats and to a boom for the people-trafficking business.

US sources indicate that migrant smuggling worldwide generates profits upwards of 7.0 billion dollars annually.

Through the mid-1990s, it was commonplace for Cubans to try to cross the Florida Straits aboard fragile watercraft, often made from inflated tyres, metal drums and plastic.

The flimsy boats were then largely replaced by speedboats, which proved difficult for the Coast Guard to intercept. Smugglers charge each immigrant 8,000 to 10,000 dollars, usually paid by family members already in the United States.

But neither the speed of the boats nor the high costs for the passage are a guarantee of safety, and the smugglers have been known to throw their passengers overboard if they think they were on the verge of being captured by the Coast Guard.

The Cuban government reports that it has detained and sentenced 87 emigrant smugglers in the past few years. Havana also announced the names and addresses of several traffickers in the United States, but authorities there have not taken them into custody.

The smugglers use high-tech devices such as cellular phones, satellite-based guidance systems and night-vision equipment to elude the Coast Guard, according to sources in the United States.

“We are very concerned by the increase in illegal immigration from Cuba in recent weeks,” Dan Kane, spokesman for the INS, said on Jun 11.

Kane warned Cuban residents of Miami against making deals with traffickers in their hopes of accelerating the reunification of their families through illegal channels. Dealing with the smugglers endangers the lives of the migrants, he maintained.

The Miami Herald reported earlier this month that 1,220 Cubans had illegally entered the United States via the coast of Florida since last October.

That sum already surpasses the 1,115 illegal Cuban immigrants recorded for the previous 12-month period, and, if past trends continue, the number will continue to rise this July and August, Cuba’s hottest months.