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CUBAN ADJUSTMENT ACT AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
CUBAN ADJUSTMENT ACT

Dear friends
Once more I want to share with you some information that I`m sure will be interesting for you.  As you must know on the Cuban TV we have a daily program that was instituted during the Elián saga that is dedicated to give information to our people about Elián, the blockade, the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA), or any other information that could be of interest to our people.  Yesterday the round table was dedicated to the CAA. I will like to give you some information that I`m sure that you could not obtain from the USA media.
In the program they made an analysis of the CAA. How the USA government doesn't conform their actions to the treaties that we have and even to the CAA. And an analysis of the last five returns that had been done by the Coast Guard from USA.
About the CAA they gave reasons why it is an incentive to the Cubans to immigrate illegally that I`m not going to explain because you know them very well. I'll only give you some numbers. From the information of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from October last year to July (their fiscal year) there had reached USA around 2200 immigrants. 85% of them transported by smugglers. Who are these smugglers?
The story of these people began when they were trained by the CIA to take counterrevolutionary acts against Cuba. After that they used the same methods to smuggle drugs principally during the Iran-Contras affair. And now they are using the same methods to smuggle people. We say in Cuba "Raise crows and they will prick your eyes". You can see now that the Coast Guard is searching for better technology to fight against these people. Anyway how many of these smugglers have been trialed and sanctioned in USA for what they do? In Cuba we have in jail 68 of them with residence in Miami and we want to send them back to USA to be judged there, where they live, and where they came from to commit their crime, but we haven`t received the approval of the USA government. Of these 68 we only judged 2, that were responsible in our national waters of the drowning of some immigrants and they got a life sentence.
In the round table it was made clear that from all of those that get to the USA we don`t have any details more that what the media publishes. Officially our government asks always for information and the USA says that they cannot give any information due to questions of privacy. So we can not say who these people are. What kind of people they are. Which one died in the attempt, or any other question. We only can make an analysis of the ones that are returned back.
Ricardo Alarcon, President of the Cuban National Assembly quotes U.S. government statistics showing immigration rates to the U.S. from other Caribbean countries, Mexico and Central America running much higher than Cuba.  These higher rates exist even though immigrants from these countries do not enjoy the automatic residency benefits bestowed exclusively on Cubans by the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Country                    Migration rate per 1,000
Cuba                                     -1.52
Guatemala                           -1.93
Puerto Rico                         -2.15
Mexico                                 -2.84
Haiti                                      -3.26
Dominican Republic           -4.14
El Salvador                          -4.66  
Jamaica                               -8.39                  
From 1/1/00 to 10/7/00 there were  527 immigrants caught before arriving to the USA. Of those,  409 were sent back and 118 admitted. So as you see the CAA wet/dry feet was not followed.. Of these 409 sent back 47% had prison background. From this information you can state that from the 2200 that arrived to the USA and not one of them was send back, around 47% of them also are criminals.
In the program were analyzed the last 5 returns of more than 70 immigrants. Who they are? What motives do they give for immigrating? How many times they try to get legal visas, etc, etc.  I`m going to note one of this groups that you must have seen in TV the last 5 of June. A group of immigrants fought the Coast Guard and were filmed throwing "gasoline" and drinking "poison". They were 8 men of them 6 had prison backgrounds. The organizer of the group, a well known criminal, had tried to immigrate twice before and had been caught and sent back. Before this he declared that he had asked for legal visa and never received it. After the first two attempts he was visited two times in Cuba by the people of the INS to check that he hadn`t been harassed as the treaties state and he asked two times again for a legal visa and was denied. So be sure that this guy will try once again until he gets dry feet and be accepted like a hero.
Dear friends this events shows everybody the double standard of the policy of the government of the USA. The problem is that we can only get the information from the people that are returned. With the ones that get to land, the biased media doesn`t makes any journalist investigation of these people because that is not the important information. To blame the evil Cuba is the information that sells news. I think you are missing a lot not following these round tables. Today there is going to be another about the CAA. I think that in the Granma website you can link to this program. It`s in Spanish but for those that can understand it will be very instructive.
I hope this information is useful for you.
Julián
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

Dear friends
One friend of us ask  me my opinion about the subject of the illegal immigrants from Cuba. The answer I give him I think could be interesting for all of you. So I send you here my opinions.
¨The battle against the illegal immigration is one of the priorities of our struggle and I will try to give you a broad opinion of this problem.
In first place you know that it has been stated recently that illegal immigration at this moment has become a bigger business than even drugs. In Europe there have been some cases of dead immigrants that have opened this problem to the whole world. Also we can say that the legal immigration from the poor countries to the rich ones is part of the history of humanity. Is very rare to find an immigration flow from the rich countries to the poor ones.
The immigration to USA is part of the history of the country. There have been big flows of immigrants, Irish, Italian, Asian and in the latest times Latin Americans, both legal and illegal. The illegal ones, that is the issue, you can see by the INS data that from Central America  and the Caribbean more immigrants try to enter the USA, in a quantity  proportionally with the population of the countries, than from Cuba.
Anyway what happens with Cuba? I´m not going to talk about the benefits of the CAA because all of you have read about this in the last month many times. But you can see in the Miami Herald, and sometimes in other medias, that every illegal immigrant that arrives in the USA from Cuba receives great coverage. 85% of them are brought by smugglers that are based in the USA, and who are almost never tried  by American courts and, if they are, they receive small sentences.  Even we have here in jail more than 50 smugglers that were caught in felony and as they are based in the USA we have tried to give them to the American authorities to be judged by them and up to now they haven´t accepted them.
The other problem that happens with these illegal immigrants is that most of them have criminal records and no one bothers with that. No one, neither the government nor the media, have ever had the intention to investigate what we say about this. Why?
But then what happens today? After Elian, the ultra right wing (CubanAmericans and also the Americans) need to change the opinion of the good Americans that in a great majority backup Juan Miguel and Elian. They will be very happy if they can demonstrate that Castro is provoking a flow of immigrants, that's why you can see so much propaganda about the illegals.
If you see the numbers you can see that in the last fiscal year there have been around 1600 arrivals from Cuba and last year in the same time there were more than 2000 in the same time. So as you see the situation, in comparison, is not critical. Of course for us this is critical anyway. We want to finish with the illegal immigration. All the people that want to go by legal means, we are ready to let them go. Why they do they receive people that never will gain the merits to receive a visa?
In sum, in my opinion, there is not any critical situation and it is a logical consequence of the CAA, the propaganda made by the media, principally the Miami Herald, radio Marti and other CANFer media, and the blockade that keeps an economical situation in Cuba that encourages the immigration.
I hope I answered your question.¨
Julián
Text (c) 2000 J. Gutierrez
Photos (c) 2000 C. O'Hara

 

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