In 2022, an unprecedented number of Cubans arrived in the United States through abnormal or “illegal” channels. Historically, the United States has encouraged and militarized Cuban emigration. Cuban immigrants fuel U. S. propaganda about the failure of socialism and political persecution and the lack of freedom and human rights on the island. However, it is a factor that can get out of control, forcing U. S. management to have interaction with the Cuban government in the past. the factor for electoral purposes. As a result, in January 2023, management introduced a law that it hopes will prevent the tide of “illegal” Cuban immigrants and threaten to undermine the general privileges granted to Cubans in the United States. However, even the United States relaxes the punitive blockade that suffocates the Cuban people, economic hardship will continue to stimulate Cuban emigration. The policy towards Cuban migrants is characterized by paradoxes and contradictions.
In 2022, more than 313,000 Cubans arrived in the United States, at most without visas and from Mexico. That’s more than double the past peak of Cuban migration during the Mariel hoisting in 1980. They were admitted after applying for asylum. However, they are economic migrants. Once settled, like many Cubans who preceded them, Maximum will return to the island as soon as possible to stop at their families’ homes without the slightest concern of reprisals from Cuban authorities.
Pull factors: Cubans are drawn to the United States through the exclusive privileges that Cuban immigrants obtain there; one year and one day after their arrival, Cubans can apply for permanent residence under the Cuban Adjustment Act whether or not they arrived legally and without the need to apply for asylum or refugee status. Although officially discretionary, permanent residency is routinely granted. Cubans are the only nationals who take advantage of this privilege in the United States. They stay in anomalous circuits and long and confusing trips, since from 2017 to 2022, the legal circuits that allowed Cubans to travel to the United States for any reason or duration (study, work, family reunification circle or apartment) were well closed. In November 2021, the Nicaraguan government removed the visa requirement for Cubans. This gave the Cubans a choice of direction: Instead of threatening the dangerous Straits of Florida by sea, they could simply fly to Nicaragua and threaten the adventure north through Central America and Mexico, heading in the same direction as millions of Latin Americans heading to the United States. . Last fiscal year, more than two million people were arrested seeking to enter the United States, an increase of 24% over the past year. For many, the adventure subjects them to human smugglers and criminal gangs who make a lucrative industry out of the despair of migrants.
Incentives: These Cubans are leaving an economy in crisis because of suffocating U. S. sanctionsAnd the pandemic of Covid-19. La shortages and shortages of food, fuel, and the resulting medicines have made daily life exhausting. Economic unrest has been strained by inflation, as a consequence of financial reunification and emerging global costs. Even the U. S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) affirmed those points in a January 9, 2023 report on the superior and developing number of Cubans found at the southwest border and banned at sea: “Cuba is facing its worst economic crisis in decades due to the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, high food costs and economic sanctions. “[1]
Between 2017 and 2021, the Trump leadership applied a strategy of “maximum pressure” against Cuba, introducing 243 new sanctions, movements and coercive measures. Among those that contribute to the increase in abnormal emigration are:
Withdrawal from consular facilities EE. UU. de Cuba in 2017. This broke previous migration agreements under which the U. S. UU. se committed to factoring 20,000 visas a year for Cubans in the U. S. The U. S. government suspended Cuba’s parole program for the reunification of the family circle, cruelly alienating families. For visas, the foreigner was told to do so, with no guarantee of success.
Eliminate legal channels for Cubans in the U. S. to work in the U. S. U. S. companies send remittances to their families at home, help them through the pandemic, and cope with emerging prices. Remittances are estimated to have declined by approximately $1. 8 billion between 2019 and 2021. Personal income has declined and national source of income has been greatly affected. Complicated and expensive channels of choice had to be discovered for sending cash.
Refer Cuba to the United States list of state sponsors of terrorism, forcing foreign banks and monetary establishments to categorize Cuba as “high risk”, crossing it off their list of sanctioned countries, for which all transactions are avoided, through natural persons, legal entities or Cubans. government, whatever its character; payment of goods and services, remittances or donations.
In 2020 and 2021, Cuba’s GDP fell by 13%. Unlike most countries, because the United States blocks Cuba’s to foreign monetary institutions, Cuba has no lender of last hotel to help it during economic crises.
President Biden has left those suffocating measures in place, adding his own sanctions in reaction to the July 11, 2021 protests in Cuba. In May 2022, Biden announced that small steps would be taken to ease Trump-era restrictions. Flights and from the United States states were allowed to increase. Cuba’s parole program for family circle reunification resumed in August 2022, after a five-year suspension, and consular facilities in Havana reopened on January 3, 2023. Restrictions on remittance amounts have been lifted, but the Cuban monetary establishment that processed money transfers remained banned, so the sending budget remained confusing and expensive in 2022.
The Cuban Adjustment Act and the “wet foot, dry foot” policy
The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 applies to any Cuban inspected and admitted or “paroled” into the United States after January 1, 1959. Initially, the law gave Cubans the right to apply for permanent residence after two years, but a 1976 amendment reduced it to one year. Historically, other people who entered the United States without a visa were released through DHS on “parole” and ordered to appear for a subsequent hearing, which can take longer than your wait for permanent residency. Until the mid-1990s, Cubans only had to succeed in US territorial waters to be eligible. This replaced it after the “crisis of the rafters” of the early 1990s when, pushed by the serious economic crisis that followed the collapse of the socialist bloc, known as the special period, tens of thousands of Cubans prepared to cross the Strait. from Florida on rafts. In 1994, US management under President Clinton panicked over the entry of up to 45,000 Cuban gallons and began talks with the Cuban government in which it was agreed that the US government would avoid admitting interdicted Cubans into US waters. Beginning in 1995, Cubans captured at sea by the US Coast Guard (“wet feet”) were returned to Cuba or a third country, while those who managed to reach shore (“dry feet”) ) can just walk in and receive parole.
In 2017, to discourage abnormal Cuban immigration, President Obama eliminated the “dry foot, wet foot” policy and directed DHS not to parole Cubans who entered illegally. Without parole, they will be excluded from the Cuban adjustment law. Cuban-American immigration attorney José Pertierra explains that DHS has just replaced the call for the mechanism used to release undocumented Cubans from “conditional release” to an “order of release on recognition” (ORR). Then in 2021 an immigration pass sentence in Miami well ruled that ORR was paroled through some other call. This interpretation was followed through many immigration lawsuits that continued to grant residency (under the Cuban Adjustment Act) to Cubans with an ORR; the “wet foot/dry foot policy” was back. This stimulated abnormal migration because, as Pertierra explains, Cubans entering the US border from Mexico knew “that by walking on US soil they would obtain a permanent apartment in the United States, even without having to seek asylum or allege persecution in their country. ” originally”. Cubans from Array continued to enjoy the privilege that US immigration law granted them for decades. “[2]
Undermining Cuban “privilege” Title 42
On January 9, 2023, Biden’s management announced that a pandemic-related immigration policy introduced under Trump, Title 42, would be expanded to return to Mexico “illegal” immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti who crossed the U. S. -Mexico border. Title 42 was first introduced in March 2020, allowing border police to temporarily deport migrants, including those seeking asylum, under the guise of slowing the spread of Covid-19 through detention centers. Biden had pledged to eliminate Title 42, but it stalled pending. In October 2022, his government began employing Title 42 to deport Venezuelans from the United States. He announced that 24,000 visas would be issued annually to Venezuelans who apply online from outside the United States and are based in the U. S. UU. patrocinador. Se says there has been a 90% relief in the number of Venezuelans arriving undocumented at the U. S. border. It has been in the U. S. since then.
Since January 9, 2023, Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans have been included in the program. If Cubans arrested at the US-Mexico border, or in the US without papers, are deported to Mexico, they will not be eligible for residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act. This resolution will address, at most, situations of legal requirement based on asylum laws. However, Biden announced that the government is preparing another regulation that disqualifies for asylum those who, in the direction of the United States, pass through a third country and do not request asylum there. “In other words, they need to close the border to Cubans who seek to cross illegally,” concludes Pertierra. Trump’s efforts to pass a similar law have been blocked by federal courts. Although Title 42 cannot be applied retroactively to recent Cuban immigrants, courts can simply apply a strict “parole” interpretation and exclude them from the Cuban Adjustment Act. His option would be to apply for asylum, but that requires evidence of fear of persecution, which will be difficult for most Cubans to provide, even in biased US courts.
Biden’s management also announced that 30,000 visas will be granted each month to Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who apply from outside the United States, have a U. S. -based sponsor, and go through rigorous background checks. Citizens of those countries who cross irregularly will not be eligible for U. S. parole proceedings. He will be subject to deportation to Mexico.
Small steps
On January 3, 2023, the United States Consulate in Havana, despite everything, resumed the visa process for Cubans. The online controlled migration formula is consistent with the national one and the first authorizations are being processed. On January 11, the US cash transfer company, Western Union, announced that it had resumed limited remittances from the United States to Cuba. During the first 3 weeks of January, more than 1,000 Cubans intercepted at sea bound for the United States were deported to Cuba. On January 18 and 19, US and Cuban officials met in Havana for bilateral talks on law enforcement (terrorism, migrant smuggling, and immigration fraud); They were the first discussions on those issues since 2018 and the third high-level meeting between the governments of the United States and Cuba in less than a year. On January 25, DHS announced that illegal crossings of the southwest border by Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans were down 97% from last month; the seven-day average had fallen from 3,367 consistent with December 11, 2022 to 115 on January 24, 2023
End the U. S. blockade of Cuba
“The magnet that attracts immigrants has been the economy,” Pertierra said. “To lift themselves out of poverty, others are willing to scale metal walls and legal obstacles. Washington knows this and that is why it is making an investment of $3. 2 billion to strengthen the economic infrastructure of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. “While abnormal immigration to the United States of nationals of those countries has been minimized, it has skyrocketed from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, a country strangled by U. S. sanctions. U. S. Pertierra has no doubt that “When the Cuban economic scenario improves, illegal immigration of Cubans will be greatly minimized. We’ve noticed it before. ” He concludes: “If the Biden administration needs to decrease illegal immigration of Cubans to the United States, it will have to. rather than granting a limited number of paroles and seeking to seal the border. He must prevent Cuba from suffocating and let it breathe.
* An edition of this article published in Fight Against Racism!Fight against imperialism!292, February/March 2023.
Feedback.
1. Federal Register, “Implementation of a Parole Process for Cubans”, January 9, 2023. https://tinyurl. com/5v5yxchj. ↑
2. Temas, interview with José Pertierra, January 9, 2023. http://temas. cult. cu/la-ley-de-ajuste-no-esta-sometida-a-norma-obligatoria-el-presidente-puede- desestimar -su-uso-entrevista-a-jose-pertierra ↑