Cubans are rushing to the US border before an immigration loophole is closed
Cubans are rushing to the US border before an immigration loophole is closed
started detaining migrants at its southeastern border after police broke a human-trafficking ring that was smuggling Cubans through the country. Officials later backed away from the measure, granting some 1,000 Cuban immigrants humanitarian visas to continue their journey after they blocked a highway in protest. Nicaragua, the next country on their way to the US,
responded by closing its border on Nov. 15, leaving hundreds of Cubans trapped in Costa Rica.
The Cuban Adjustment Act, the law that allows Cubans to stay in the US even if they arrive without a visa, was enacted in 1966 to manage an exodus from the island after the Cuban Revolution. President Bill Clinton later modified it to only include Cubans who touched dry land, not those intercepted in US waters, a policy known as “wet-foot, dry-foot.” Some
half a million Cubans, including
the father of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, have become legal residents through the act.
While US officials have said they
have no intention of changing that law as they revamp relations with Cuba, there is growing pressure to repeal it. Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman who represents Arizona, last month filed a bill to end the “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy. “If President Obama has normalized relations with Cuba, why would we treat illegal immigrants from that nation any different than those from other countries?” he said
in a statement.
Support for the law is faltering even in Miami, the US’s Cuban-American stronghold.
Speaking on a local talk show, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican congresswoman who fled Cuba when she was eight years old after Fidel Castro took power, said, “it wouldn’t break my heart if it’s done away with.”