Cubans cross Central America for Mexico on way to US

Costa Rica will ask worldwide organizations to help finance the trip through Central America of many Cubans stranded on its border since November, intending to reach the United States.

Cubans will leave Costa Rica on a charter flight to El Salvador, where they will take a bus to Guatemala, continue to the border with Mexico and finally cross overland to the northern nation. After being flown to El Salvador, the 109 men and 71…

Plane and bus tickets cost $550 per person, according to Costa Rica’s migration authorities who organized the trial trip. They will be given 20-day visas in Mexico while they figure out how to enter the US borders.

One anxious Cuban woman, 28-year-old Liana Cabezas Gonzalez, said she would take a domestic flight in Mexico to reduce that risk.

Four buses carrying the Cubans crossed the Mexico-Guatemala border in Ciudad Hidalgo, many looking exhausted as they lugged backpacks and suitcases to an immigration office.

“It is certainly the case that Cubans have been the beneficiaries since the Castro revolution of a very special policy that applies only to Cubans and that has been in contrast with all other nationality groups”. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 18… “Cubans of course know that this is likely to change and so they are in much larger numbers making last ditch efforts to get to the USA while it’s still possible”. The first pilot flight is scheduled to depart early Wednesday for El Salvador, as part of a regional agreement to overcome Nicaragua’s refusal to let them through by land.

The migrants were greeted by El Salvador’s foreign minister upon arrival in that country even as, when they got to the Guatemalan border, they saw a busload of Salvadoran migrants headed the other way after being deported back from the United States.

The renewal of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana past year has fed a wave of migration from the Caribbean Island to the U.S.

The Cubans won’t have to worry about that due to a US immigration policy that lets them stay if they reach the United States.

Meanwhile, The Guardian reveals that once the immigrants enter the USA borders, they will be welcomed because of the us immigration policy. The Central Americans are coming in because they – many of them fear for their lives of those vicious gangs they have up there.

Backers of United States’ Cuban Adjustment Act say it offers refuge to islanders fleeing Cuba’s communist system.

“With this action [for the Cubans], we are showing dignified treatment and respect for human rights, which are things that the administration of El Salvador’s president…is asking for our own migrants”, Martinez said.