As Congress hammers out a plan to reform the country’s immigration laws, a controversial Cuban immigration policy might get looked for the first time in many years.
In Washington, two Florida lawmakers are doing a lot of the heavy lifting during immigration reform efforts.
In the Senate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-FL, is leading a small bipartisan coalition writing sweeping immigration reform. Republican Rep. Mario Diaz Balart, who represents parts of Collier and Miami-Dade, is a key lawmaker shaping the U.S. House of Representatives’ bill.
Besides being important Florida lawmakers, both men are also Cuban Americans.
For many years Cuban Americans have followed a special set of immigration rules. Jaime Suchlicki, the director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, says now is the time to re-evaluate those rules.
“The policy toward Cuba, which is not only the ‘Wet and Dry Foot’ Cuban Adjustment Act allowing Cubans to stay in the United States if they reach American soil, but also the 20,000 visa agreements between Cuba and the United States,” Suchlicki says. “All of these have to be reviewed or come under discussion.”
The current U.S. policy towards Cubans was created to provide ‘political exile’ status to people that were looking to escape communism during the Cold War.
The root of the controversy with the law, however, isn’t that the law is outdated. It’s that many Cubans coming to the U.S. these days end up going back to Cuba to visit family and friends.
Suchlicki says he thinks that’s why most Cubans who fled during the revolution in the early 1960s would like to see that policy adjusted.
“The older Cubans who have been here for a long time feel that the Cuban adjustment should be tightened to involve political persecution and political escapees--not for people who come to the United States and stay here for a year and then go back,” he says. “That is not the intent of the Cuban Adjustment Act.”
Diaz Balart says he would be interested in finding a way to curb the number of Cubans taking advantage of the law, but he doesn’t think the law should be repealed.
“There is a reason why the Cuban Adjustment Act exists,” he explains. “There have been abuses of that law, that’s what puts laws like that in jeopardy. However, I am a strong believer that the circumstances for that law still remain. But if we can look for ways to curb the abuse, that is obviously something that we always have to look at.”
According to Rubio’s office, there is nothing in his immigration reform proposal that addresses the Cuban Adjustment Act. However, he told Reuters that it was becoming increasingly difficult to justify the law to his colleagues.
