Change in Cuba Policy Floated

A Bush administration proposal to change current immigration practices for Cubans, aimed at discouraging a politically disastrous mass migration, could backfire, exiles and analysts say.

The policy changes under consideration by the Homeland Security Department propose to reject any visa applications from Cubans who attempt to enter the United States illegally. The draft document, obtained by the Associated Press earlier this week, also suggests accelerating visas for family members of U.S. residents -- a registry of more than 10,000 who wait as long as a dozen years to be reunited with U.S. relatives.

“Taken together, they promote safe, legal and orderly migration, while they also support the Cuban people in their aspiration for a free and prosperous society,” the draft reads.

Encouraging Cubans to remain and work for change on the communist-ruled island echoes appeals by President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for pro-democracy demonstrations while Cuban leader Fidel Castro is incapacitated.

Castro, who has ruled Cuba for nearly 48 years, handed temporary governing authority to his brother Raul after undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding on July 31. Neither Castro has been seen in public since.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Joanna Gonzalez would say only that the policy changes were matters of “internal deliberation.”

“We always consider what could cause a mass migration, but in the event of a mass migration, the Coast Guard is prepared. They have plans,” she said.

Politicians here and in Washington have expressed fears that a mass migration of Cubans in this midterm election year could be disastrous for Republicans already under pressure on the issue of security with the Iraq war, the Israel-Lebanon crisis and current immigration policies.

But some Cuban Americans in South Florida say they are tired of being used by politicians who tailor important issues such as immigration to appease a hard-line minority of exiles in exchange for their electoral support.

Any measure to punish illegal migration here would address the desire among the most fervently anti-Castro exiles to ratchet up internal pressures in hopes of stirring an anti-communist uprising.

But more recent and moderate emigres now outnumber those who fled Castro’s 1959 revolution, and they are more concerned about the potential for violence among those left behind.

Damian J. Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, said the administration had been sending up trial balloons like the Homeland Security memo because its No. 1 objective was to prevent another rafter crisis.

He said Washington was under “intense competing political pressures” from the splintered exile community.

With a possible Cuban transition ahead and U.S. political candidates on the midterm election hustings, those seeking office are conscious of the 1980 Mariel boat lift that brought 125,000 Cubans to South Florida in a motley, monthlong flotilla. President Carter lost his reelection bid later that year.

Another 40,000 inundated the state in 1994, when the cutoff of Soviet aid devastated living standards on the island.

The U.S. and Cuba signed a migration pact after that exodus, providing a “safety valve” of 20,000 U.S. visas a year to Cubans and a staged process for reunifying families.

The migration accords deem all other U.S. entry illegal, but in practice Washington has adhered to a “wet foot/dry foot” policy, repatriating Cubans intercepted at sea while allowing those who reach U.S. soil to stay.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) “has always denounced and been opposed to the migration accords,” said Ana Carbonell, his chief of staff. “We feel it is a mechanism that has provided relief for the Castro regime and allowed them to control who leaves Cuba.”

Cuba analysts warn that disqualifying “wet feet” from future visa consideration could be counterproductive.

The proposal to punish illegal immigrants intercepted at sea by making them ineligible for U.S. visas provides scant deterrent to those who have no family members here to join.

“I don’t think it works as a disincentive. I think that when a 25-year-old Cuban is intercepted and told, ‘We’re taking you back and you will never get a visa,’ he will say, ‘I’ll get another boat,’ ” said Philip Peters, vice president of the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Va.

Asked if the public discussion of possible policy change might instigate the kind of migration crisis the administration wants to avoid, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) replied: “Possibly.”

“I think the question that the Cubans are going to be asking themselves is: ‘Why are you doing this?’ There is an inherent distrust of the U.S. and especially this administration. There is a concern that this administration might do something that could result in chaos on the island if Fidel Castro should die,” McGovern said.

Asked about the Homeland Security memo Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said: “Right now we’re encouraging everybody not only to stay put, but urging Cubans to stay on the island and work toward democracy.”

If there is a dramatic change in the political situation in Cuba, Snow said, “there may be adjustments in U.S. policy.”

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Nicole Gaouette in Washington contributed to this report.