New U.S. Policy to Allow In Some Cuban Refugees

As many as 10,000 Cubans detained in camps at U.S. military bases in Cuba and Panama will be considered for parole into the United States on humanitarian grounds, the Clinton Administration announced Friday.

In reversing a policy against granting asylum to Cubans who fled their homeland on makeshift rafts last summer, the Administration has bowed to mounting pressure from the exile community here to end the indefinite tent city internment of children and their immediate families.

“This government has always shown it has a big heart,” said Miami city manager Cesar Odio, who heads a coalition of Cuban American groups that has lobbied for the refugees’ release. “And those people were never going to stay in those camps.”

In a statement, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said that only children and their immediate relatives would be considered for parole and that all must have “full financial sponsorship” in the United States.

There are about 3,000 children under the age of 17 in the camps in Panama and at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba’s Southeast coast.

Doris Meissner, who heads the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, told a Washington press conference Friday that she could not estimate the number of Cubans who might qualify for parole as “extraordinary hardship cases.” She added that living in the barren tent city encampments does not constitute a hardship.

But Cuban American leaders in Miami expressed confidence that all minors would be paroled and that, including their relatives, between 8,000 and 10,000 Cubans would start to arrive here within days.

The announcement from Washington had been expected for weeks. It came after a meeting in the capital Thursday between Michael Skol, deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, and representatives of Miami Cuban American groups, who offered assurance that sponsors for all the refugees had been lined up.

“They will not be a burden to the taxpayers of the United States,” said Odio.

Of more than 32,000 Cuban rafters picked up at sea and held in the detention camps, only about 500 have been admitted to the United States. Most of those are unaccompanied minors, the elderly, or persons with severe medical problems. All were granted humanitarian parole.

About 23,000 Cubans are being held at Guantanamo, while about 9,000 others are in Panama. Fewer than 200 have been repatriated to Cuba.

Although denied automatic entry to this country since August, any Cuban who does enter the country will still benefit from the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows for permanent residency after one year.

The release of all children and their immediate families will leave about 20,000 Cubans in the detention camps, most of them single men and women. Privately, most Cuban American leaders here expect that these Cubans, too, eventually will be permitted to come to the United States, perhaps by qualifying for one of 20,000 visas that the Administration has agreed to make available.

But Odio said that those who remain in the camps will have to wait. “They are another chapter in this long history; we have to be patient,” he said.

“One of the goals is to see we don’t have another rafters’ crisis.”

No timetable was given for bringing the Cuban children and their families to the United States, although Odio said that “once organized, there will be two to three flights a week.” Most of the refugees are expected to stay in South Florida, although as many as 30% could be resettled in other Cuban communities in New Jersey, New York and California.

When Clinton slammed the door on the rafters on Aug. 19 as a way of stopping the chaotic exodus, most Cuban Americans in Miami supported the move as a tough response to Cuban President Fidel Castro. But the anguish provoked in the Cuban community here by the sight of relatives and fellow Cubans behind barbed wire quickly turned into intense pressure on the Administration.

The cost of resettling up to 10,000 people has been estimated at $15 million. The Cuban American National Foundation and other groups said that they have pledges for as much as half that amount now.

If necessary, several airlines have offered special charter flights to bring the refugees to Miami and private schools have said that they would provide scholarships to emigre children to relieve pressure on the public school system.

Times staff writer Robert L. Jackson contributed to this story from Washington.