WSJ: "US Offers Refuge to Cubans, Even if They're Not From Cuba"

[magbana]

comments before Article from Walter Lippmann, CubaNews editor

Thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we have an excellent new further
addition to the literature explaining some of the massive array of
special rights, special privileges and special advantages which the
United States government grants to people of Cuban origin, even if
they have never set foot on the island itself. We should be grateful
to the WSJ for this timely report. Coming as it does during the visit
of members of the US House of Representatives, it should be shared as
widely as possible. Most people in the United States, and elsewhere,
are simply not aware of these remarkable facts and figures. I wasn't.

As Washington continues to build walls to prevent immigrants coming
in from most countries, it continues to provide red carpet treatment
for Cubans, as it has since 1966 when the Cuban Adjustment Act was
enacted. The Bush administration expanded CAA privileges by allowing
"non-Cuban Cubans" to enter the United States, and the administration
of President Obama is continuing these special advantages.

At the WSJ's website, there's a blog which anyone can participate in.
Since I woke up earlier than usual today, I got in the first comment.

BACKGROUND INFO ON THE CUBAN ADJUSTMENT ACT:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/migration.html
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WALL STREET JOURNAL
APRIL 7, 2009

U.S. Offers Refuge to Cubans, Even if They're Not From Cuba
By JOEL MILLMAN

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123905224683194377.html

The world-wide economic crunch has slammed shut ports of entry for
immigrants almost everywhere, and in some places even produced offers of
all-expense-paid trips home, courtesy of the migrants' host countries.

Thanks to a recent twist on a relic of the Cold War, however, there is a
welcome mat out for an expanding number of U.S.-bound migrants -- so long as
they can establish that they are citizens of Cuba, even if they have never
set foot on the island.

It happened thousands of times during the fiscal year that ended in
September, according to figures recently released by the Department of
Homeland Security. The DHS, which oversees U.S. immigration matters,
recorded nearly 41,000 residence permits issued to foreigners asking to stay
under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, the law that gives haven to any
Cuban fleeing the Castro regime who makes it to U.S. soil and stays at least
a year.

Of those applicants receiving green cards, more than 3,400 were born in a
country other than Cuba. That is up from 2,725 applicants with similar
status the previous fiscal year.

Among the new green-card holders are hundreds of Cuban families from
Venezuela, and smaller numbers from Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina.
Nine Cubans were admitted from the Ukraine, according to DHS figures.

Maria Teresa Guma, a 60-year-old Venezuelan who has been living in Florida
since 2005, got her green card this past winter -- after persuading a U.S.
immigration court in Miami she is also a Cuban citizen, by virtue of her
parents' births in Havana more than 80 years ago. Ms. Guma's daughter-in-law
in Puerto Rico got her green card last month, using a similar argument.

It is a quirk in U.S. immigration law that requires some finagling to
access. Essentially, it permits dual-nationals to apply to stay in the U.S.
as Cuban citizens after entering the U.S. as citizens of another country.

The vast majority of Cuban Adjustment applicants leave Cuba, either with
visas allowing them to immigrate directly to the U.S., or as refugees who
ride rafts to the Florida coast or escape via Central America and Mexico.
But a growing number are nationals of third countries who acquire Cuban
citizenship papers from Cuban consulates, then enter the U.S. as tourists
from their birth countries.

Getting a tourist visa to the U.S. as a Cuban citizen is much more
difficult, but once the dual nationals arrive, they reveal their Cuban
citizenship and petition to stay as refugees.

Avelino Gonzalez's immigration-law practice in Miami's Little Havana
neighborhood handles about a hundred Cuban Adjustment cases each year. Many
weeks, he will work cases of foreigners who entered the U.S. as Venezuelans,
but now seek permanent residency as Cubans. Lately, he has been handling
clients who arrived from across Latin America.

"I've got cases pending now from Cubans born in Costa Rica, Honduras, the
Dominican Republic and Colombia, too," says Mr. Gonzalez, 43, who is himself
a refugee from Cuba, and a former professor at the University of Havana's
School of Law.

Another Miami immigration attorney, Sandra I. Murado, said the law doesn't
require a Cuban seeking permanent residency be persecuted in his or her
homeland, or even that they reside there. All that is required is that an
applicant be recognized as Cuban by U.S. authorities. And since 2007, the
children of Cuban exiles haven't had to make a trip to Havana for the
evidence needed to back up their claim.

The recent appearance of third-country Cubans on U.S. immigration-court
dockets stems from an interpretation of the 1966 law that emerged from a
case argued two years ago, an appeal known as "Matter of Vazquez." That case
established precedent in dealing with Cuban nationals under the Cuban
Adjustment Act, ruling that Cubans applying for residency in the U.S. are no
longer required to prove their bona fides exclusively from documents issued
to them in Cuba, such as passports or birth certificates. U.S. immigration
officials agreed to also accept birth documents issued by Cuban consulates
abroad.

Venezuela, where more than 50,000 Cuban exiles settled in the 1960s,
witnessed a surge of second-generation Cubans visiting Cuba's two consulates
in the country, seeking overseas birth certificates. Cuban officials charge
about $200 to process each request, which involves bureaucrats in Havana
tracking down the birth records of the applicant's mother or father, and
certifying that the offspring also have a right to Cuban citizenship. The
entire process can take a year or more.

It is worth the time and expense, says Miguel de la Vega, a former marketing
executive in Venezuela for the U.S. agribusiness titan Cargill Inc., whose
father fled Cuba in 1959, the year Fidel Castro's revolutionaries came to
power. He entered the U.S. as a Venezuelan on a tourist visa, but applied to
stay as a Cuban.

Mr. de la Vega counts at least a half-dozen of his own kinfolk as newly
arrived in Florida this way, with two going through the process now in
Venezuela. None has ever experienced life under Castro. "We're grateful to a
country that gives us this opportunity," he says.

Mr. de la Vega says he left Venezuela for much the same reason his father
fled Cuba: dissatisfaction with government policies that wrecked the local
economy. Now that he has permanent U.S. residency, he is free to travel
anywhere in Latin America on business. Last week, he was back in Venezuela.

Write to Joel Millman at [e-mail]

=========================================
WALTER LIPPMANN
Los Angeles, California
Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
"Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo"
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