Thread: Cubans surge into U.S. via Southwest border

Cubans surge into U.S. via Southwest border

By Lomi Kriel
November 2, 2015

The number of Cubans coming to the United States has surged dramatically since President Barack Obama announced in December an opening of ties with the communist island nation, an analysis of government data has found.

The issue resonates in Houston, where a skyrocketing number of Cubans are flocking, increasingly choosing the Southwest border crossing instead of the treacherous waters to Miami, for decades the traditional route. As the Houston Chronicle reported in February, more than 17,400 Cubans crossed the Southwest border last year, the most in the past five years and a 217 percent increase since 2010.

Now an analysis by the Pew Research Center, a think tank in Washington D.C., has found that nearly 27,300 Cubans entered the U.S. via ports-of-entry during the first nine months of the 2015 fiscal year, which ended in September. That's nearly an 80 percent increase over the same time period the previous year, when more than 15,340 Cubans arrived.

In particular, the analysis found that the spike in the number of Cubans entering came in the months immediately following Obama's announcement. From January to March 2015, about 9,370 Cubans entered, more than double the nearly 4,300 who arrived during the same time period in 2014.

And like the Chronicle reported earlier this year, the majority are entering through the U.S. Border Patrol's Laredo sector. During the first nine months of fiscal year 2015, two-thirds of all Cubans, nearly 18,400, came through this sector, a 66 percent increase from the same time period in the previous fiscal year.

However, the largest percentage increase occurred in the Miami sector, which more than doubled in the first nine months of the fiscal year with more than 7,160 Cubans arriving without visas at ports-of-entry compared to nearly 3,000 in the same time period a year before.

Not all Cubans who attempt to enter the U.S. make it. Under current U.S. policy known as wet-foot-dry-foot, Cubans caught trying to reach the U.S. by sea are returned to Cuba or, if they cite fear of prosecution, to a third country. In fiscal 2015, the U.S. Coast Guard apprehended more than 2,920 Cubans at sea, the highest number of any country.

In Houston, local resettlement agencies say Cubans now make up more than half of their caseloads as the prospect of normalizing U.S.-Cuba relations could endanger their long-standing immigration benefit. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, intended to protect those fleeing communism, grants any Cuban who reaches the U.S. a much-coveted green card, making them the only nationality in the world with such an expedited track to American citizenship.

Critics say it's a Cold War relic that no longer makes sense and should be repealed. A fear of losing that is drawing many Cubans, who seek to take advantage of the benefit before it expires. But refugee workers say other Cubans are flocking here in droves simply because they have a basic distrust that their tiny island nation even has the capacity to change.

"It's very hard to see the light at the end of such a long time," Agustin Socorro, a Cuban who came here in 2003 and oversees Cuban resettlements at Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, told the Houston Chronicle in July.

The Miami Herald last week also published a story about the exodus of Cubans across the Americas, who are going from Cuba to Ecuador or Venezuela before traveling across Central America to the U.S. border. Cubans interviewed by the Herald said that they have little hope for significant changes under the Castro regime, despite the restored diplomatic relations and some economic openings on the island signed off by Cuban leader Raúl Castro.

"Everybody who leaves Cuba knows that nothing is going to change there," Reyna Rojas told the Herald. "And if there is going to be change, it will take 30 or 40 years. Perhaps longer."

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news...-S-6605643.php

by SYLVIA LONGMIRE
3 Nov 2015

When most Americans think of large numbers of Cuban migrants leaving the island nation, they picture rafts and boats headed towards the Florida Keys. However, this new exodus finds hundreds of Cubans heading to Central America and joining those following the same migration routes heading towards the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to the Miami Herald, border entries by Cuban nationals are at their highest since 2005. The have climbed from 5,316 in 2011 to 17,459 in 2014. According to the latest figures from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), at least 27,413 Cubans have entered through the US-Mexico border from Oct. 1, 2014, through Aug. 31, 2015. The numbers are high enough that some human rights activists in Mexico have labeled it a “migration crisis.”

Cuban immigrants detained by CBP receive different treatment than other migrants from Latin America because they are fleeing a communist country. They are afforded certain privileges under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that allows them to be granted asylum much more easily than other applicants for relief from deportation. Many Cubans who are now fleeing the island fear the US government will repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act now that diplomatic ties between the two countries are being restored.

Pinar del Río [Cuba] native Carmen Ordaz, 33, also was headed to Miami to join her husband Orlando Cata. He was a doctor assigned to community service in Venezuela, defected through Colombia and made the same journey about five months ago. Ordaz followed suit, arriving by bus to Miami a week ago after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in Reynosa, Texas. “The fear is that the Cuban Adjustment Act will end,” Ordaz said. “So people are getting out.”

In decades past, there have been three major waves of Cuban migration: in the early 1960s after Fidel Castro’s communist revolution, in 1980 when Castro opened his prisons and let people leave Cuba (known as the Mariel boatlift), and the 1996 exodus under President Bill Clinton that resulted in the “wet feet, dry feet” policy currently in effect. This means that if a Cuban citizen is interdicted at sea by US authorities, they are immediately returned to Cuba. However, if they successfully make it to US soil, they are generally granted asylum if they have no criminal history.

Cubans are now more frequently exploring land routes by using human smuggling networks that will get them into South or Central American countries. From there, they’ll use the services of smugglers just like the locals to get them to the US border, where most likely they’ll turn themselves in to CBP or Border Patrol and request asylum.

Those who were interviewed by the Herald have little hope for any meaningful change in Cuba leading to more freedom. “Everybody who leaves Cuba knows that nothing is going to change there,” said one migrant. “And if there is going to be change, it will take 30 or 40 years. Perhaps longer.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...border-mexico/