WASHINGTON — The foreign minister of Costa Rica has called on the United States to abandon the Cuban Adjustment Act, calling it largely responsible for attracting tens of thousands of Cubans to Latin American countries, which they then use as a springboard to get to the United States.
Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said Costa Rica and other transit countries pay the consequences of the law that all but guaranteed Cubans’ admission to the United States, by permitting those who reach the U.S. to stay there. Now that Cuba and the United States have restored relations, Gonzalez questions the need for a law constructed during the Cold War, he said.
“We don’t disregard the humanitarian perspective,” Gonzalez said in an interview. “But this has cost us millions of dollars – and millions of dollars that we don’t have available. Our people are claiming how is it possible that you don’t invest in your own people and you spend millions of dollars on handling migrants?”
Costa Rica was at the center of the controversy this year when thousands of Cubans were stranded after officials broke up a smuggling ring that was bringing them from Ecuador. Gonzalez said the United States must do more than urge the countries to better enforce their immigration laws.
Largely at the behest of the Obama administration, the governments of Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama have increased their efforts to keep thousands of Cubans — and migrants of other nationalities — from using those nations to get to the United States. The United States has urged Latin American leaders to tighten their borders, dismantle smuggling networks and issue travel documents only for legal travel.
The efforts have alarmed Cuban activists, who say the U.S.-encouraged crackdown will force desperate Cubans back into the ocean for the more dangerous journey through the Florida Straits.
But the U.S. push has had an effect. Officials in Colombia this month began deporting about 1,200 Cubans who had been stranded there after Panama closed its border. The Panamanian government warned 600 Cuban migrants to abandon the region or risk deportation. Mexico recently deported more than 88 Cubans.
More than 46,500 Cubans were admitted to the United States without visas during the first 10 months of the 2016 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center, compared with more than 43,000 in 2015 and just over 24,000 in 2014.
Colombian migration officials said they could not discuss collaboration with the United States, but noted that not only Cubans are headed to the U.S. border.
Perhaps encouraged by the Cubans, a surge of migrants from Haiti, Africa and the Middle East have been following a similar route.
The migration is a huge concern for Cuban officials, who charge that the United States is encouraging “illegal” and dangerous migration by tens of thousands of Cubans who fear their windows of opportunity might close. The communist government likens the migrant flow to stealing – many would-be arrivals are professionals trained at Cuban government expense – and see it as an obstacle to improved relations with the United States.
It’s a touchy subject for the United States, which has long welcomed Cubans who fled the Castro regime. But times have changed. The Cold War is over. The two countries have re-established diplomatic relations.
Cuban activist Ramon Saul Sanchez said the crackdown by regional governments hadn’t affected the number of Cubans arriving in Miami, and that in any case, they would continue to flee until the Cuban government provided them with economic opportunities at home. That, he said, means that more will take the dangerous ocean route or hire smugglers who can take them through perilous jungle regions where they can avoid authorities in other countries.
That assertion is supported by U.S. Coast Guard statistics, which show a steady increase in the number of Cubans attempting the sea crossing.
How many don’t survive the crossing is unknown. Since Ecuador began cracking down on Cubans in July, Sanchez said, he received more calls from people looking for family members who attempted the crossing.
“A lot of people have now disappeared or died,” Sanchez said. “I get calls – 10, 12, 14 a day – from relatives here looking.”
