Surging number of migrants fleeing island as some experts cite concerns that US may revise its ‘wet-foot, dry-foot’ policy, which grants unique privileges

Surge in Cuban migrants heading to US by sea since diplomatic breakthrough Read more

Weather-beaten, gaunt and exhausted, Ramón Pérez still seemed dazed as he quietly recounted the six-day sea journey from Cuba to Miami he undertook in a tiny homemade boat with 11 others and a dog.



Their water and food, mostly peanuts, ran out after four days, he said. The barely-seaworthy vessel into which they were packed came close to capsizing several times in storms. And the ever-present threat of death, coupled with constant exposure to extreme temperatures and skin-blistering daytime sunshine, denied anybody aboard more than a few minutes’ sleep at a time.

“All the time is the fear of not making it over here, all this only to die at sea,” whispered Pérez, speaking to the Guardian through a translator at a refugee reception centre close to Miami airport.

But Pérez, a 45-year-old construction worker from Villa Clara province, who left his wife and six children behind in Cuba to attempt the perilous crossing, became more animated when asked why he risked his life to come to the United States.

“Now I am here all I want to do is work. To find a job and send money back to my family so they can have a better life, and one day come to America,” said Pérez, who asked to be identified with a pseudonym, for fear of reprisals against family members who remain in Cuba.

Pérez and his fellow migrants created quite a spectacle when they came ashore on Miami Beach last month. Their diminutive craft, hammered out from old steel drums with a tree branch mast and plastic sails, provided a curious juxtaposition against the backdrop of the Delano Hotel’s grand and iconic Art Deco architecture.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The diminutive boat was hammered out from old steel drums with a tree branch mast and plastic sails. Photograph: El Nuevo Herald/TNS via Getty Images

Yet there was nothing uncommon about their journey. Surging numbers of Cubans have been fleeing the island to try to reach the United States despite – or more accurately because of – the recent thaw in relations between Washington and Havana. The US coast guard reports that it has intercepted and repatriated more than 4,300 in the 12 months since last October, 600 more than the previous year, and US Customs and Border Protection figures earlier in the year reflected a 118 per cent spike in Cubans seeking asylum at land borders with Mexico and in Miami.



Experts say the surge has been triggered by fears that the recent détente may prompt the US to revise its “wet-foot, dry-foot” policy which grants unique immigration privileges to Cubans. Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, any migrant intercepted at sea is sent back, but those Cubans who make it to land can stay, and can apply for permanent residency after a year and a day.

“Many of them fear this might be their last opportunity,” said Oscar Rivera, director of the Miami office of Church World Service, one of two humanitarian agencies in South Florida that helps new arrivals through the immigration process.



“We started to see an increase in refugees coming from Cuba through South America and across the land border into Texas when Obama announced the negotiations with Cuba last December.

“And over the summer the numbers of rafters coming by sea, in makeshift boats, has been significant. They’re coming now because they think if things don’t improve in Cuba, what’s going to happen to them?”

Rivera said the organisation’s workload, which includes helping to process and resettle migrants under Department of Homeland Security funded programmes, has increased tremendously.

New arrivals often need immediate help finding accommodation and healthcare, and CWS also provides legal guidance through an often bewildering immigration process plus educational opportunities to help them assimilate to a new country.

“With the staff and money we have, we do wonders [but] it’s scary because the numbers, and the unknowns, are increasing,” he said. “A lot of the folks that are coming, they’re common workers who see no opportunity in Cuba. They’ve heard promises so many times before.”

Officially, the Obama administration insists nothing will change. “We currently have no plans whatsoever to alter the current migration policy, including the Cuban Adjustment Act, and we have no plans to change the wet foot, dry foot policy at the same time,” secretary of state John Kerry said in August at a flag-raising ceremony for the newly reopened US embassy in Havana.

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At sea it is also business as usual. US coast guard vessels continue to patrol the Florida Straits and coastline along the Gulf of Mexico and eastern seaboard looking out for migrants, and in just one week during September picked up a further 121 attempting the 90-mile crossing from Cuba to Florida.

“Despite the recent steps to begin normalising ties with Cuba, the coast guard’s missions and operations in the southeast remain unchanged,” said spokesman Captain Mark Fedor in a statement.



“Our immigration policies remain the same and we continue to strongly discourage those attempting to illegally enter the country by taking to the sea. There are legal ways to enter this country and this is not it,” he said.

The Cuban government, however, believes the willingness of the US to take in its citizens (more than a million since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, according to many estimates) continues to harm the country. Migration was one of the main talking points at September’s inaugural meeting in Havana of the new US-Cuba bilateral commission, at which discussions were “full and frank” according to the US state department.

It will be on the table again in December when the commissioners, representing the state department and Cuba’s foreign ministry, meet in Washington to establish the priority issues and set a timeline for future negotiations.

The island government’s criticism of the Cuban Adjustment Act, meanwhile, has an unlikely ally in Republican senator Marco Rubio, presidential hopeful and son of Cuban immigrants – as well as a vocal critic of what he calls President Obama’s “appeasement” of his parents’ homeland. Rubio says the policy encourages Cubans to risk their lives at sea and allows Cuba to send spies to the US in the guise of refugees.

For Pérez, and many others like him who accepted that risk in search of a brighter future, all the talk of new beginnings in US-Cuba relationships counts for very little. He and his friends spent a month and half building their boat in secret, and ever fearful of being discovered and denounced o the authorities. But Pérez said his only concern had been the future of his wife and six children – five boys and one girl aged five to 15.

“Politics, politics,” he said. “Politics doesn’t clothe my children or put food on our table.”