Cubans find fast, illegal path to U.S.
By Carol J. Williams
Los Angeles Times
MIAMI — A multimillion-dollar human-smuggling enterprise is bringing
thousands of Cubans to the United States on speedboats at a price of up
to $10,000 a head, and the flourishing business has increased the number
of Cubans illegally entering the country by double-digit percentages in
each of the past three years.
More than 16,000 Cubans have arrived illegally this fiscal year, which
ends Sept. 30, numbers that have alarmed law-enforcement officials and
spurred increased surveillance. Most arrived on remote beaches in the
Florida Keys or in Mexico, where they could enter the U.S. Southwest
through official border crossings.
Under a practice known as the "wet-foot, dry-foot policy" — stemming
from immigration accords negotiated between the United States and Cuba —
Cubans who make it to dry land can stay and obtain legal U.S. residence.
Those intercepted at sea are sent back.
Coupled with 20,000 visas issued to Cubans each year for legal
immigration, the numbers arriving now rival the 35,000 who crossed the
Straits of Florida in 1994 to escape the poverty that gripped
communist-ruled Cuba after the Soviet Union disintegrated, ending the
billions in subsidies it once sent to Havana.
The smugglers' success using so-called "go-fast" boats — light, open
craft fitted with outboards enabling speeds as high as 100 mph — has
convinced South Florida Cuban exiles who put up the money for their
relatives' passage that they are paying for a service rather than
committing a crime, authorities say.
Stepped-up Coast Guard and Border Patrol surveillance has netted record
numbers of go-fast-boat operators and their human cargo. Authorities
also have seized 159 of the specially outfitted vessels over the past
year. Fifty-eight men have been arrested and prosecuted over the past 18
months, according to the U.S. attorney's office for in Miami.
There have been at least a half-dozen deaths resulting from erratic
maneuvers by boat captains trying to evade capture or from smugglers
tossing paid passengers overboard to force authorities to stop chasing
the boats and rescue the jettisoned men, women and children.
More Cubans have been arriving in the United States via organized
smuggling operations than by homemade rafts or other rickety craft.
Anti-smuggling patrols have intercepted go-fasts carrying as many as 65
Cubans, said Luis Diaz, a Coast Guard spokesman. The vessels are
designed to carry eight to 10 passengers safely.
With the boats costing about $200,000 each and Miami sponsors paying
$6,000 to $10,000 for a relative's transportation from Cuba, smugglers
can recoup their investment quickly, especially when they're willing to
compromise safety, he said.
The 1994 and '95 immigration agreements signed by Washington and Havana
were drafted after the biggest influx of illegal Cuban immigrants since
the Mariel boatlift of 1980 brought 125,000 here in a motley flotilla.
The accords mandate that at least 20,000 U.S. visas be issued to Cubans
each year to provide a safety valve for the overwhelmed Cuban economy.
U.S. diplomats in Havana conceded this summer that they were unlikely to
issue their full quota of Cuban visas by the end of the fiscal year,
blaming Cuba's officials for putting up obstacles to the import of
needed supplies, equipment and personnel to process the documents.
Cuba's top diplomat in Washington, Dagoberto Rodriguez, countered in
August that the U.S. government was trying to instigate another
dangerous illegal exodus.
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
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