Calls of bias mar meeting

Posted on Thu, Mar. 09, 2006

IMMIGRATION
Calls of bias mar meeting
Cuban-American leaders met with federal officials seeking to change the
wet-foot, dry-foot policy, but some called the meeting partisan.
BY OSCAR CORRAL AND LESLEY CLARK
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

In a day that underscored tension between some Cuban exiles in Miami and
the Bush administration, Cuban-American leaders met with federal
officials in Washington to ask for a new U.S.-Cuba migration policy,
while others called the meeting partisan.

The Cuban-American group wants the administration to change the
controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy in which Cubans caught at sea
are generally returned to the island while those who reach U.S. soil are
allowed to stay.

At the White House meeting, Republican U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen,
Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and several spiritual leaders from Miami's
Cuban exile community asked federal officials from the departments of
State and Homeland Security to make the policy more humanitarian for Cubans.

NO POLICY CHANGE

The response from Washington: We'll see. ''The meeting was designed to
allow for a serious dialogue, and does not signal any change in policy
as it relates to Cuba or any other country's migrants,'' said White
House spokeswoman Maria Tamburri.

The meeting came almost two months after the Coast Guard repatriated 15
Cubans found on the old Seven Mile bridge in the Florida Keys -- a move
that set off controversy and a 12-day hunger strike by the Democracy
Movement's Ramon Saul Sanchez.

Upset that the group's lawyers were not invited, Sanchez flew to
Washington, anyway, and met behind closed doors with Democratic Sens.
Bill Nelson and Bob Menendez.

''We had hoped that this could be bipartisan, and that it kept in mind
not politics, but the rights of balseros,'' Sanchez said.

Nelson said he and his Republican counterpart, Sen. Mel Martinez, were
asking for a meeting Thursday with Bush administration officials. He
said it was ''impossible legislatively'' for him to attend Wednesday's
meeting, though he had been invited. Martinez also was unable to attend.

Lincoln Diaz-Balart said the White House meeting was ``frank and fruitful.''

MAIN REQUESTS

Diaz-Balart's office said the group asked, among other things, that
migrants receive some sort of legal representation when picked up by the
Coast Guard; that a portion of the 20,000 visas allowed for Cuban
migration every year be set aside for Cubans picked up at sea and in
third countries; and that the administration review the process by which
the Coast Guard determines if migrants have a credible fear of persecution.

The administration designated Cuban American Emilio Gonzalez, head of
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, as a liaison between Cuban
American members of Congress representatives and the administration.

Nelson said he already had asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to
review the wet-foot, dry-foot policy to prevent a repeat of the bridge
fiasco he called the ``height of ridiculousness.''

Martinez said in a written statement he has met with the State
Department and several other federal agencies on the matter. ''Serious
options need to be brought to the table in order to make this
unsustainable policy humane and transparent,'' Martinez said.

New Democrat Network consultant Joe Garcia said the difficulty in
getting a meeting with the White House shows how the Bush administration
brushes off the Cuba issue.

''What's sad is that Ramon Saul Sanchez had to go on a hunger strike to
get a meeting with policy makers about immigration in a community . . .
[that] votes overwhelmingly Republican,'' Garcia said.

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