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 News from Around the Americas | March 2006 
Cuban Official Blames U.S. in Keys Case
 Vanessa Arrington - Associated Press
| | A group of 15 Cubans, who landed on pilings along a nearly 3-mile span of the former bridge Jan. 4 when their boat reached an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys, are seen walking after a meeting at the Refugee Office of the U.S Interests mission in Havana, Cuba, Monday, March 6, 2006. (AP/Javier Galeano) |
A top Cuban official blamed the United States for the predicament of a group of migrants sent back home after reaching an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys.
The U.S. government said the bridge did not count as dry land because chunks of it are missing and it no longer connects to U.S. soil — and it sent back the 15 men, women and children in January.
Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon criticized the U.S. "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy. Under the policy, Cubans who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay, while those stopped at sea are returned.
It encourages illegal and dangerous immigration, Alarcon told journalists Friday.
"Ask them if one has to risk their life, going to strange places like the bridge, to make a judge order (the U.S. government) to grant a visa?" he said.
The fate of the 15 who reached the bridge was not clear.
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered U.S. officials to "use their best efforts" to help the Cubans return to the United States, writing that "those Cuban refugees who reached American soil in early January 2006 were removed to Cuba illegally."
The migrants were completing applications for Cuban passports, and had a meeting scheduled for Monday at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
Alarcon declined to say whether the island's communist government would allow them to leave.
"I have no idea whether they will go or not, but I know they are people who did not have visas (previously)," he said. |
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