End special privileges for Cuban immigrants

(REUTERS)

By Susan Eckstein

President Barack Obama has taken initial steps toward overhauling the broken U.S. immigration system and failed Cuba policy. It is also time to bring Washington’s Cuban immigration policy in line with other foreign-born people. Cubans enjoy unique immigration privileges that are no longer justifiable.

Ever since Fidel Castro seized power in Havana in 1959, Cubans who reach the United States without immigration visas have been given a path to citizenship. For the past 20 years, they have been guaranteed immigration visas not offered other foreigners.

U.S. presidents and Congress have also given Cuban immigrants rights offered no others. The policy was initially devised to sap the Cuban regime of its talented citizens and highlight these Cubans’ preference for capitalist democracy over communism.

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During the Cold War, Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson admitted Cubans fleeing the Communist regime with temporary visas or visa waivers not offered any other foreign nationals. Then, in 1966, Congress passed the Cuban Adjustment Act, which entitled Cubans who reached U.S. shores to temporary parole status and, a year later, to permanent legal residency with a path to citizenship.

Congress designed this bill to apply only to the 165,000 Cubans who had taken refuge in the United States and whose immigration status was in limbo. The legislation, however, had no expiration date. So it has been applied for nearly 50 years to new arrivals from Cuba and about half-million Cubans have benefitted since 1966. There are no “undocumented” Cubans in the United States.

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