OBAMA ENDS WET FOOT DRY FOOT LAW

The White House ✔ @WhiteHouse
Statement by @POTUS on Cuban immigration policy:

Cuba has complained repeatedly that the wet-foot, dry-foot policy has served as a magnet, encouraging Cubans to make dangerous sea passages and siphoning off Cuban professionals who want to improve their economic situation.

It was instituted by former President Bill Clinton in an effort to end the 1994 rafter crisis. Prior to that, Cubans picked up at sea were brought to the United States.

The Cuban government announced the policy change in a national broadcast Thursday evening, calling the end to wet foot, dry foot “an important step” in resolving illegal migration and bringing an end to “special treatment” for those fleeing illegally.

The White House also said it was ending the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program that gives preferential treatment to Cuban medical professionals who want to come to the United States.

“The United States and Cuba are working together to combat diseases that endanger the health and lives of our people. By providing preferential treatment to Cuban medical personnel, the medical parole program contradicts those efforts, and risks harming the Cuban people,” the president said.

South Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen objected to the curtailment of the medical parole program, saying that it was “undermining the Castro regime by providing an outlet for Cuban doctors to seek freedom from forced labor which only benefits an oppressive regime.”

A Department of Homeland Security official said an immigration lottery that allows at least 20,000 Cubans to emigrate to the United States legally each year would remain in effect. The Cuban family reunification program, which allows legal residents in the U.S. to apply for relatives to join them, will also continue.

“This still doesn’t mean the end of separate legal treatment of Cubans, that is not going to completely go away,” said Kunal Parker, a University of Miami immigration law expert. What the policy change does mean is that Cubans will have to proceed through legal channels, or risk being repatriated to Cuba, he said.

Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, a Cuban exile, blasted Obama for giving Castro a parting gift: “This is just a going away present from Obama to [Cuba leader] Raúl Castro.”

Regalado doesn’t believe ending the policy will slow the flow of Cubans coming to the U.S. All it does, he says, is throw the process into question.

U.S. officials said the United States and Cuba had been negotiating the change with Cuba for several months. Cuba and the United States convened a meeting in Washington on Thursday, which will continue Friday, to discuss efforts to fight human trafficking.

“This policy is often discussed here as if it is purely unilateral,” said U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson. “In order for this to work, the Cuban government had to agree to take people back. It was only in recent years, as the uptick in migration continued that they entered into those discussions with us.”

Dialogues on various topics of mutual interest have been underway with Cuba since Obama and Castro announced on Dec. 17, 2014 that the two countries would renew diplomatic relations and work toward normalization of their troubled relationship.