U.S. ends immigration amnesty for Cubans

This policy allowed Cuban medical personnel to receive USA visas if they defect while traveling outside of Cuba.

In 2016, the CPB reported “more than 50,000 Cubans inadmissibles presented themselves at USA ports of entry (POE)”.

President Barack Obama on Thursday announced that he was scrapping a 1995 policy known as “wet foot, dry foot” that allowed Cubans without visas automatic entry into the United States if they set foot on U.S. soil.

Another man said that he agrees with the policy change. Then, like many of his compatriots, De La Guardia started the long overland journey through Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

US deportations hit an all-time high under Obama.

“The future of Cuba should be in the hands of the Cuban people”.

“There are millions of people in Cuba”, she said.

Gonzalez was a political prisoner in Cuba, He tried to leave boat in 1961 and was caught. “We’ve already had to bribe border guards and cross into several countries illegally, so we will continue to do that”.

Cuba considers a positive step forward in improving relations with the US an agreement announced yesterday by President Barack Obama to secure regular, safe and orderly migration between the two countries. “The government waits to see whether the policy will continue beyond the current administration before the government can determine what the policy’s full effects are”. “It is in fact President Obama’s failed Cuba policy, combined with the Castro regime’s increased repression, that has led to a rise in Cuban migration since 2014”.

The White House said in a statement that the change means people who flee the communist country, would be treated the same way migrants from other countries are treated.

Another Cuban who was hoping to make it to the U.S.A., Ulises Ferrer, said, “We don’t know what we’re going to do now”. He also added that the Obama administration had not consulted Congress before changing the policy. “This change “normalises” our treatment of Cuban immigrants”. “I need to do something with my life now”. Its suspension is part of the rapprochement between the USA and the island nation orchestrated by Obama and Cuban president Raúl Castro.

That prompted a spike in the number of migrants attempting the trip, out of fear that normalised relations would bring an end to the special status granted to Cuban immigrants.

More recently, it’s been hard to reconcile the preferential status for Cubans when thousands of unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America have been arriving at the southern USA border.

In 2016, 54,000 Cubans migrated to the US, according to the Obama administration. Patrick Leahy, long a proponent of thawing relations between the United States and Cuba. “We’d rather stay here than go back home”.