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 News from Around the Americas | October 2006 
Returned Migrants Grow Desperate Waiting for Cuban OK to Leave
 Associated Press
| | A group of Cubans who landed on pilings along a nearly 3-mile span when their boat reached an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys are seen leaving the office of the U.S. Interests mission in Havana,Cuba, Monday, Oct. 2,2006. A federal judge ruled that the U.S. government acted unreasonably when it sent home 15 Cubans who thought they had safely made it to the United States. U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno ordered the federal officials to 'use their best efforts' to help the immigrants return to the United States but they are still awaiting permission from the Cuban government to leave the country.(AP/Javier Galeano) |
A group of Cuban migrants sent home in January after reaching an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys said Monday their own government has not given them approval to leave more than six months after they received U.S. visas to emigrate.
Growing more desperate as the months pass, the 14 migrants met Monday with U.S. officials, who said they would investigate the matter.
"Right now we're looking very carefully at this case," said John Wallace Bird, who oversees U.S. citizenship and migration services for the American mission in Havana. "We're concerned it's taking so long for them to receive permission to leave the country."
Bird said U.S.-Cuba migration accords prohibit the island's government from punishing Cuban migrants that are returned home.
The Cuban government has never publicly commented on the details of the case, but frequently criticizes the U.S. government's migration policy for Cubans, saying it encourages them to undertake risky sea voyages with the hope of obtaining American residency.
Under the United States' "wet-foot/dry-foot" policy, most Cubans who reach U.S. soil are allowed to remain and seek American residency, while those intercepted at sea are generally sent home.
The migrants in this recent case left Cuba without government permission in January, reaching an old bridge in the Florida Keys.
But the U.S. Coast Guard sent the migrants back to Cuba after determining the bridge did not qualify as dry land because parts were missing and it no longer connected to U.S. soil.
The repatriation created an uproar in South Florida's Cuban exile community.
A deal allowing the migrants to emigrate permanently was reached in March between U.S. District Judge Frederic Moreno in Miami and the U.S. government, which initially argued that the U.S. Coast Guard acted correctly in sending the Cubans back.
Soon afterward, the U.S. government granted humanitarian visas for the 14 migrants, refusing a visa to a 15th member of the group, reportedly for giving false statements to U.S. authorities.
They then applied for the so-called "white card," an exit permit Cubans must receive from the communist government to leave the island. They have since quit their jobs as instructed by Cuban authorities in preparation to leave for the United States.
"We are in a situation that's dragging on," migrant Alexis Gonzalez Blanco said, adding "we don't have money." |
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