Migrants say Cuba is slow to issue exit visas

Posted on Sun, Dec. 17, 2006

IMMIGRATION
Migrants say Cuba is slow to issue exit visas
A group of Cuban migrants talks about their successful trip back to
Florida on a homemade boat -- almost a year after they were repatriated
because they had landed on an old bridge.
BY ELIAS E. LOPEZ
elopez@MiamiHerald.com

That summed up the sentiments of a group of Cuban migrants who went
before a cluster of microphones and television cameras Saturday to talk
about their successful journey to U.S. soil -- nearly a year after the
U.S. government had returned them to Cuba in a controversial decision
that angered many in Miami's Cuban exile community.

''We're very happy to be here,'' said Marino Hernández, 42. ``We were
never afraid, we just decided to do it.''

Hernández was among nine Cuban migrants who made it to shore in a
homemade boat on Friday. The group landed in the Florida Keys, just
south of the Seven Mile Bridge.

Hernandez and 14-year-old Osmiel were reunited with Mariela Conesa, of
Hialeah, who had not seen her husband and son in almost nine years.

''He's already a man,'' said Conesa, 36, rubbing her son's shoulders at
the press conference. ``He's braver than I ever was.''

The reunification of the family brought to an end a long odyssey that
began in the predawn hours of Jan. 4 when Hernández and Osmiel first
landed on a piling of the Old Flagler Bridge near Marathon with 13 other
Cubans.

What they didn't realize is that they and the others would become
entwined in an immigration debate centered around the wet-foot/dry-foot
policy, which was adopted in 1994 by the Clinton administration to deal
with the Cuban rafter exodus.

Under the policy, Cuban migrants who reach U.S. soil are allowed to stay
and apply for residency, but those intercepted at sea are generally
returned to Cuba.

Federal officials determined that the bridge, not connected to land, was
a structure and not part of U.S. territory.

As a result, the Cubans were repatriated, setting off a legal battle.
The migrants ultimately won the fight earlier this year, when a federal
judge found that the U.S. government erred and that the bridge was part
of the United States.

Since the judge's decision, U.S. and Cuban officials have been
negotiating the return of the migrants. But some of the migrants who
arrived Friday said they saw no choice but to attempt the journey again
because they claimed the Cuban government was dragging its feet in
providing them exit permits.

''The Cuban government forced us to do it,'' said Tomás Perdomo, a Cuban
dissident. ``I wanted to come the legal way.''

''This is a testimony of the tragedy of the Cuban people,'' added Ramón
Saúl Sánchez, who heads Movimiento Democracia, which organized the news
conference and provided the migrants with attorneys.

Several members of the group who reached the Keys in January are still
in Cuba, including Elizabeth Hernández, her husband Yunior Alexis Blanco
and their 3-year-old son.

''We're very happy that they made it,'' said Elizabeth Hernández in a
telephone conversation from her home in San Francisco, a small town in
Cuba's Matanzas province. ``Now we're hopeful that the Cuban government
would expedite our permits . . . because I know how dangerous is the sea
and we think it's logical to wait and not to risk the life of our son.''

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/16258191.htm