Cuba has announced that the delayed meeting with the US on immigration issues will take place in Havana next month. The discredited Cuban Adjustment Act is on the table.
Bruno Rodriguez said negotiators will meet Feb. 19 in Havana and Cuba wants Washington's help in combating people smuggling, often carried out by gangs with souped-up speed boats that ferry Cubans out of the country. While some head for Florida, most arrive on the Caribbean coast of Mexico or Central America and make their way north to the U.S., where they usually are allowed to stay….Under U.S. law, Cubans captured at sea are usually deported while those who reach American soil can apply for residency — making Mexico an attractive route. Cuba has long denounced Washington's so-called "wet-foot, dry-foot" policy as encouraging illegal immigration.
This should be a no-brainer as both pro and anti-reform groups in the US want to end a policy which elevates Cubans above illegal immigrants from Haiti, Central America and China.
Reformers see the current policy as providing economic motivation for dangerous trips and extortionate payments to traffickers.
Anti-reformers see their political base in Miami diluted by thousands who come to the US without obsessive hostility to their homeland and quickly want to send back remittances and make family reunion visits.
The ludicrousness of the situation is illustrated by aspiring migrants in Mexico learning Cuban accents and family histories to sustain forged documents in order to present themselves as qualified for admission at the US border.
Having settled that, how about the negotiators laying the groundwork for mutual gestures to address related problems?
1) Allowing Cuban and the US students to freely undertake educational exchanges,followed by
2) Doing away with all US and Cuban restrictions on travel, a.k.a. licenses and exit permits.
Links and resources:
"Cuban Migration to South Florida: Impact and Implications", a paper on the political cost of too easy entry published by the anti-reform Cuba Transition Project, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami (Issue 114; October 9, 2009)
"Cuba’s Émigrés: The Absent Voice" posted on The Havana Times
Tom Richmond blogs about a cultural exchange trip by cartoonists to Cuba