Cubans Flood Mexico in Bid to Reach U.S.

Cubans Flood Mexico in Bid to Reach U.S.
Migrants from island, sensing fragility of their special access to legal
status in U.S., are heading to Mexico with the aim of getting to Texas
quickly
By DUDLEY ALTHAUS
Nov. 16, 2015 7:50 p.m. ET

TAPACHULA, Mexico—Cuban migrants, fearing the gate will soon close on
their easy access to legal U.S. residency, have been surging by the
thousands through Mexico in a bid to touch soil in southern Texas.

The surge was prompted by the detente between Washington and Havana,
which restored diplomatic relations in December.

Cubans arriving on Mexico's southern border say the change they consider
most imminent is an end to the fast track to legal U.S. residency that
their compatriots have enjoyed for generations. The so-called dry foot
provisions of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act allows migrants fleeing the
island who make U.S. landfall to apply for asylum and all but certainly
obtain a green card in only a year.

"There are thousands more on the way behind us," said a 38-year-old
father of three who was among a dozen young Cubans who turned themselves
into Mexican immigration officials last week in Tapachula, a city near
the Guatemala border, to obtain papers allowing them to continue
northward toward the Rio Grande.

"Everyone wants to go now while it is possible," he said.

Cubans continue heading by raft or boat to South Florida—the U.S. Coast
Guard detained nearly 3,000 of them at sea in fiscal year 2015—or near
Cancún on Mexico's Caribbean coast. But most now opt to travel by land
into southern Mexico, having started their journey in Ecuador and made
an arduous weekslong journey overland.

More than 28,000 Cubans requested asylum in southern Texas in the 12
months ended Sept. 30, according to the U.S. government's count. They
represented about two-thirds of all Cuban asylum seekers in that period
and an 80% increase over the previous year.

The more than 9,300 Cubans who have registered with Mexican immigration
officials since January to gain safe passage through the country mark an
almost fivefold increase from 2014. The Cuban tide has been rising since
midsummer, said Mario Madrazo, the Mexican federal official in charge of
immigration control.

The 38-year-old in Tapachula said he first tried to reach Florida by sea
in a makeshift raft in early October. The raft was intercepted by the
U.S. Coast Guard 4 miles off Key West, he said, and he and 10 companions
were returned to Cuba on Oct. 12.

Five days later, he flew to Ecuador, which requires no visa for Cubans,
and joined a 19-year-old cousin to immediately begin the journey
overland, he said.

"I've left my children and my wife in Cuba, my mother and father. But I
want them to have a better life," said the man. "I had a chance to
leave, so I took it."

The U.S. treatment of Cuban migrants stands in contrast to that afforded
Mexicans or Central Americans traveling without U.S. visas, who are
routinely detained and deported. Under U.S. pressure, Mexico has
toughened controls on its southern border this year, detaining nearly
200,000 mostly Central Americans, while allowing the Cubans to continue
on their way north.

But calls for altering the dry-foot provision, or scrapping it
altogether, have been growing. Rep. Paul Gosar, (R., Ariz.) co-sponsored
a bill in October to end the Cubans' privileged treatment, arguing that
since relations are being normalized, "Cuban nationals should be treated
under the same immigration rules as any other person seeking to immigrate."

While considered unlikely to pass, the bill has been endorsed by
conservative groups pushing to tighten U.S. immigration controls.

The 38-year-old and other migrants interviewed in Tapachula said they
intended to fly to Mexican cities on the U.S. border before crossing
over, seeking to avoid the lengthy and risky overland trip in Mexico,
where migrants are often robbed, kidnapped and murdered by criminal gangs.

The Cubans said they already had suffered a lifetime worth of extortion,
price gouging and other abuses by officials and civilians alike in their
weekslong trek through some of the world's more dangerous corners.

"Everyone has a different story, but all of them are of a difficult
trip," said a 46-year-old mechanical engineer, who had made the
three-week odyssey from Ecuador with his wife, a physics teacher.

The couple had slipped out of their town near Havana under the guise of
going camping at the beach, they said. They left two daughters, several
grandchildren and lifelong friends behind.

After working several months in Ecuador to raise cash, they departed
Quito in mid-October on the well-worn path of Cuban migrants. After
bribing their way into Colombia they took buses the hundreds of miles to
the Caribbean coast, often paying twice or triple the normal fare, they
said.

Joining other Cuban migrants, they crossed into Panama on a small boat
and then paid nearly $600 apiece for a quick hop in a light plane to
Panama City. Still more buses took them to Costa Rica, where they said
more bribes were paid, and then through Nicaragua, Honduras and
Guatemala, paying bribes and inflated fares on every leg.

By the time they crossed the shallow Suchiate River by makeshift raft
into Mexico, the couple had spent about $1,700 each. A commercial flight
to the Texas border would cost them just another $300 per person. In
all, that is just half, or less, than what smugglers charge these days
to get illegal migrants into the U.S.

"We have passed through underdeveloped countries with people who are in
very bad situations, but we have seen many more luxuries than we ever
did in Cuba," the engineer said. His wife added that she gained weight
on the journey, despite its hardship, because food was more readily
available than back home.

"The idea now is to work hard and to live like a human being," the
engineer said of his plans once the couple reaches Miami. "I don't need
to be rich. I want to live free and feed my family, that is all. In Cuba
it's impossible to aspire to anything."

Source: Cubans Flood Mexico in Bid to Reach U.S. - WSJ -
http://www.wsj.com/articles/cubans-flood-mexico-in-bid-to-reach-u-s-1447721432