Cuba Blames US for the Nearly 2,000 Cubans Blockaded by Nicaragua
HAVANA TIMES (dpa) — The government of Cuba blamed the migratory policy of the United States towards the island for the situation of nearly 2,000 Cuban migrants who are stranded on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, according to a state television broadcast on Tuesday.
“These citizens are victims of the politicization of the immigration issue by the Government of the United States, the Cuban Adjustment Act and, in particular, the implementation of the policy called “wet feet, dry feet,” said the ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minrex).
The official communiqué notes that the US law “gives Cubans a differentiated treatment, unique in the world, to admit them immediately and automatically, regardless of the ways and means used to reach US territory, legal or not.”
The Cuban Adjustment Act, enacted in 1966, gives Cubans permanent US residency and facilitates employment and social integration, while the legislation popularly known as “dry feet, wet feet”, accepts Cuban migrants who touch US soil. Those intercepted at sea by the US Coast Guard are returned to the island.
The foreign ministry said the Cubans who are stranded on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua became “victims of traffickers and criminal gangs, who unscrupulously profit from the control of the passage of these people in South America, Central America and Mexico.”
Minrex said it has remained in “constant contact” with the governments of the countries involved, in order to “find a quick and appropriate solution” that takes into consideration “the welfare of these Cuban citizens.”
Likewise, Minrex assured that the Cubans “who have left the country legally and comply with existing immigration legislation” have the possibility of returning to Cuba.
For three days, almost 2,000 Cubans are stranded on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua pending a solution to their problem of their illegal transit to the United States.
The Nicaraguan government refused to receive the migrants, who came from Ecuador after illegally crossing the borders of Colombia and Panama led by traffickers who charged them to take them to the United States.
On Sunday the government of Daniel Ortega sent in the army and riot police to block the Cubans attempt to transit through Nicaragua. The armed forces used tear gas and rubber bullets against the unarmed women, men and children, forcing them back to the Costa Rican side of the border, where they are awaiting a solution to their plight.
The border is located on the Pan American Highway, which extends from northern Mexico to South America, passing through Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama.
I don’t support the Wet foot/Dry foot policy. Nothing in my comments reflects that I would. Had more of the disenfranchised and disenchanted Cubans been forced to remain in Cuba, the Castros may not have had such an easy time staying in power. It is debatable as to whether or not the program is UN-democractic but it is certainly unfair. I continue to assert that it is the tyranny of the Castro regime that encourages Cubans to flee the island. US policy simply provides a simple way to act on the desire to escape the hopelessness under the Castros.
The human traffickers love your comments, Moses, but democracy-lovers believe that special U. S. laws that benefit only Cubans while discriminating against everyone else, not only all other would-be migrants but U. S. taxpayers, encourage human trafficking that shames the U. S. Even Marco Rubio is upset that Cubans long to touch U. S. soil, get on welfare, return to Cuba, and still get their welfare checks. Of course, Rubio maintains that such welfare sent to Cuba all goes in Fidel Castro’s Swiss bank account. Rubio’s background in Little Havana educated him to believe that democracy-loving Americans are either too stupid or too intimidated to object strenuously to such anti-democratic disasters as Wet Foot/Dry Foot, the Cuban Adjustment Act, etc. “The Castros blaming the U. S. fools no one.” Are we supposed to repeat that refrain, Moses? As I understand it, Cuba’s top news anchor and leader of the island’s twentysomethings, 27-year-old Cristina Escobar, wrote the summation quoted in the above article. Last week, in a regional broadcast picked up by YouTube and Telesur, she blasted the Cuban government for spending too much money on new hotel rooms instead of keeping its promise to improve the private residences of poor Cubans. I believe she is correct is criticizing the Cuban government in that regard and I believe she is correct in criticizing Wet Foot/Dry Foot, etc., as U. S. laws that are designed to benefit only Cubans and human traffickers while harming everyone else, not to mention the images of the U. S. and democracy. You pretend, amazingly, that only Cubans who are mistreated on the island have yearning desires to reach the U. S. Such propaganda assumes American’s are stupid or unaware that migrants all around the world desire to immigrate to the U. S., especially the influx recently from the U. S. Territory of Puerto Rico. Laws in the U. S. Congress favoring only Cubans is not only undemocratic but it breeds human traffickers who have reportedly doubled or tripled their fees as they tell Cubans to hurry up because the U. S. — HOLY COW!! — is about to do away with Wet Foot/Dry Foot because of Obama’s detente. Not likely, because the vast Castro Industry in the U. S. has too firm a grip around the throats of both the U. S. Congress and the U. S. democracy.
Please explain how the embargo is fully to blame for poverty in Cuba.
The poverty in Cuba which drives the migration is part if the imperial plans to overthrow Cuba’s alternative to free enterprise capitalism .
The Castros blaming the US fools no one. That’s like the house thief who blames the homeowner because they left the back door unlocked. If the Castros had not created an environment from which these 2000 and tens of thousands more Cubans wish to flee in the first place, this refugee crisis would not exist.