Calls to end so-called 'wet-foot-dry-foot' policy grow as ties between U.S., Cuba improve

Calls to end so-called 'wet-foot-dry-foot' policy grow as ties between
U.S., Cuba improve
By Elizabeth Llorente Published July 13, 2015 Fox News Latino

Calls are growing for the Obama administration to end the decades-long
practice of allowing Cubans who make it onto U.S. soil to stay here.

The practice, which stems from the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act and is
informally known as the "wet-foot-dry-foot" policy, allows Cubans who
make it to the United States to remain her legally.

They can obtain permanent U.S. residency after a year and a day.

The policy has been controversial for a long time, drawing criticism
from some who view it as preferential treatment. Haitian-American
groups, for instance, often contrast how much harder it is for their
compatriots to get legal residency in the United States.

Now that Cuba and the United States are re-establishing diplomatic
relations and recently announced that embassies would be reopened in
Havana and Washington, D.C., before the end of July, many argue that
it's time to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act.

"The politics of the issue have evolved," Marc R. Rosenblum, deputy
director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy
Institute, told Fox News Latino.

There also have been published reports about how some Cubans obtain
refugee status – presumably because they fear persecution in their
native homeland – yet regularly travel between the U.S. and the
communist nation after obtaining legal residency here.

"People see certain Cubans abuse the Cuban Adjustment Act, and travel
back and forth, taking advantage of that privileged status."

The Obama administration, mindful of the emotionally-charged debate
around the special program – Cuban exiles have pushed hard to keep it in
place – quickly noted after announcing the push to normalize relations
that the wet-foot-dry-foot policy would remain in place.

Remberto Perez, vice president of the Cuban American National
Foundation, one of the nation's most influential Cuban exile lobbying
groups, says the re-establishment of diplomatic relations has not meant
an end to the human rights abuses that have driven many to flee to the
United States.

"It's still a brutal dictatorship, and if people are risking their lives
to escape the regime, we should give them asylum," Perez, a New Jersey
businessman, told FNL. "Cuba is just giving lip service and
window-dressing. Cuba cannot be compared with Haiti. Cuba is a police
state."

Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Miami Republican and the son of Cuban exiles, has
drafted legislation that seeks to modify the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Among other things, his measure requires people who want to stay in the
United States via the Cuban Adjustment Act to prove they face political
persecution.

It would also rescind the residency of refugees who return to Cuba
before they complete the process of becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen.

"When you do talk to other members of Congress about the abuses of the
Cuban Adjustment Act," Curbelo's chief of staff, Roy Schultheis, told
the Sun Sentinel, "everyone accepts that they exist."

Some groups, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or
FAIR, want to see more than just a tweaking of the Cuban Adjustment Act.

"With the re-establishment of full diplomatic relations with Cuba, our
outdated Cold War immigration policies with that nation must end," Dan
Stein, FAIR's president, told FNL.

"If we are treating Cuba like virtually every other nation on earth in
terms of trade, cultural exchanges and diplomacy, then we should also
treat Cuban citizens like everyone else when it comes to immigration to
the United States," he added.

Former Cuban political prisoner Luis Israel Abreu, a New Jersey resident
who long has been active in pushing for democratic reforms on the
island, says the practice should remain, although with some tweaking.

"Cuba does have conditions that are unparalleled in much of the world,"
Abreu told Fox News Latino. "There continue to be dire human rights
violations by the government, there continue to be people imprisoned
merely for their political beliefs. Cuba is a state sponsor of
terrorism, and it is led by a brutal dictatorship."

What could change about the policy, Abreu said, is tightening the
screening for who gets to stay in order to make sure the policy provides
relief to people who truly are fleeing persecution, not to those who are
leaving for purely economic reasons.

Rosenblum of the Migration Policy Institute says it's hard to continue
to justify a blanket granting of U.S. residency to every Cuban who makes
it ashore when no other group in the world gets the same privilege.

He said the double standard is particularly glaring given the efforts by
the U.S. government to deport unaccompanied minors from Central America
who arrived at the U.S. border in recent years, trying flee the soaring
violence and poverty in their homelands.

"They're treated very differently," Rosenblum said.

He added that the Cuban Adjustment Act can be applied more fairly
without doing away with it.
Rosenblum said the act does not require the U.S. to give every Cuban
reaching the U.S. a path to refugee or asylum status.

"It authorizes [the U.S.] to grant a visa to arriving Cubans, but
doesn't require that it be given to everyone who arrives here," he said.
"But that is how it has been implemented. It shouldn't be a blank check."


Elizabeth Llorente can be reached at
elizabeth.llorente@foxnewslatino.com. Follow her on
https://twitter.com/Liz_Llorente

Source: Calls to end so-called 'wet-foot-dry-foot' policy grow as ties
between U.S., Cuba improve | Fox News Latino -
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2015/07/13/calls-to-end-so-called-wet-foot-dry-foot-policy-grow-as-ties-between-us-cuba/