US

US ends ‘wet foot, dry foot’ Cuban immigration policy

Policy allowed any Cuban who reached US soil to stay and become a legal resident

File photograph from March 2016 of US President Barack Obama and President of Cuba Raul Castro in Havana, Cuba. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

Fri Jan 13 2017 - 09:30

Barack Obama is ending a long-standing immigration policy that allows any Cuban who reaches US soil to stay and become a legal resident.

The US president's repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy is effective immediately and follows months of negotiations focused in part on getting Cuba to agree to take back people who had arrived in the US.

"Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with US law and enforcement priorities," Mr Obama said in a statement.

“By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.

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“The Cuban government has agreed to accept the return of Cuban nationals who have been ordered removed, just as it has been accepting the return of migrants interdicted at sea.”

‘An important step’

The Cuban government praised the move, calling the signing of the agreement “an important step in advancing relations” between the US and Cuba that “aims to guarantee normal, safe and ordered migration”.

Mr Obama is using an administrative rule change to end the policy, but president-elect Donald Trump could undo that.

Mr Trump has criticised Mr Obama’s moves to improve relations with Cuba, but ending a policy that has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to come to the United States without a visa also aligns with Mr Trump’s commitment to tough immigration policies.

Bill Clinton created "wet foot, dry foot" policy in 1995 as a revision of a more liberal immigration policy that allowed Cubans caught at sea to come to the United States and become legal residents in a year.

The two governments have been negotiating an end to “wet foot, dry foot” for months and finalised an agreement on Thursday.

A decades-old US economic embargo, though, remains in place, as does the Cuban Adjustment Act, which lets Cubans become permanent residents a year after legally arriving in the US.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cuba has agreed to take back those turned away from the US, if the time between their departure from Cuba and the start of deportation hearings in the US is four years or less.

Officials said the timeframe was required under a Cuban law enacted after Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act.

“For this to work, the Cubans had to agree to take people back,” said Ben Rhodes, Mr Obama’s deputy national security adviser.

Administration officials called on Congress to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Officials said the changes would not affect a lottery that allows 20,000 Cubans to come to the US legally each year, but Mr Rhodes cast the shift as a necessary step towards Cuba's economic and political development.

“It’s important that Cuba continue to have a young, dynamic population that are clearly serving as agents of change,” he said.

Mr Rhodes also cited an increase in Cuban migration, particularly across the US-Mexico border - an upturn many have attributed to an expectation among Cubans that the Obama administration would soon move to end their special immigration status.

Since October 2012, more than 118,000 Cubans have presented themselves at ports of entry along the border, according to statistics published by the Homeland Security Department, including more than 48,000 people who arrived between October 2015 and November 2016.

Relations between the United States and Cuba were stuck in a Cold War freeze for decades, but Mr Obama and Cuban president Raul Castro established full diplomatic ties and opened embassies in their capitals in 2015.

AP

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