Cuba says U.S. deliberately behind on visas
BY PABLO BACHELET
pbachelet@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON --
Cuba said Tuesday the United States has fallen behind in the number of
visas allotted for Cubans, suggesting this was a deliberate attempt by
the Bush administration to stir trouble on the island.
Cuba's foreign ministry said the United States had only awarded 10,724
visas in the nine-month period ending June 30, or 54 percent of the
20,000 annual quota of visas agreed to in the 1994 migration accords.
A U.S. failure to meet its quota would be a ''grave and unjustifiable''
violation of the agreements, according to a statement published in
Tuesday's edition of the Communist Party Granma newspaper.
The United States and Cuba have often traded allegations that the other
uses migration for political ends, but the matter is especially
sensitive now, after a sick Fidel Castro handed power to his brother
Raúl last summer -- setting the stage for the first leadership
transition in nearly half a century.
The migration accords were designed to discourage illegal crossings of
the Florida Straits by providing a safe way for Cubans to leave, but
Cuba now suggests the Bush administration is deliberately slowing the
process.
The Cuba statement asks whether President Bush's desire for change on
the island was behind the delay in granting visas, ``even though this
provokes a situation of instability that would almost surely also affect
the United States.''
The foreign ministry said the United States should stop ''the
manipulation of the migration issue with political ends'' and criticized
Washington's policy of allowing Cubans who make it to the U.S. mainland
to stay while returning those caught at sea, a policy known as
``wet-foot, dry-foot.''
Presumably, fewer visas could result in more Cubans taking to the sea to
reach the United States.
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