Sunday, December 28, 2014

Cuba Deal Brings Questions on Deportations and Special Immigration Rights

The historic renewal of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba has raised a thorny new question about the fate of tens of thousands of Cubans the United States wants to deport, some of whom have spent years in jail.
According to the latest figures, 34,525 Cubans have been ordered deported — and at least 110 are being detained, including two men who have been held in federal immigration detention for roughly two decades.
Florida Department of Correction
Federal immigration officials said it is too soon to say whether full-scale deportations would resume to the Caribbean island under the new relationship. Since the two nations severed ties in 1961, the United States has welcomed Cubans who managed to get here. But some Cubans have been ordered deported, usually because they committed crimes. The United States could not carry out the deportations, however, because Cuba refused to accept them.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

People queue for visas at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, 
Cuba, Monday, Dec. 22, 2014 (AP Photo/Desmond Boylan)
Cubans Worry downside of US Detente could be Loss of Special Migration Rights
Like tens of thousands of Cubans, Gerardo Luis wants to get to the United States and he's suddenly worried that time may be running out.
Across an island where migrating north is an obsession, the widespread jubilation over last week's historic U.S-Cuba detente is soured by fear that warming relations will eventually end Cubans' unique fast track to legal American residency.
For nearly a half-century, the Cuban Adjustment Act has given Cubans who arrive in the U.S. a virtually guaranteed path to legal residency and eventual citizenship. The knowledge that they will be shielded from deportation has drawn hundreds of thousands of Cubans on perilous raft trips to Florida and land journeys through Central America and Mexico.
"If they take away the adjustment law, it would mean Cubans would end up just like all the other Hispanics who want to enter the United States," said Luis, a 36-year-old construction worker who said he may try to reach Mexico and walk across the border if he doesn't get a visa soon.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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