The killer law: revisiting Cuban Adjustment

The cartoon above, from Cuba’s Foreign Ministry, shows a Cuban citizen hoping to get a visa and leave for Miami, only to be told by a U.S. diplomat, “There are no visas, but we do have rafts.”

The cartoon and a great article from Tuesday by Nick Miroff reminded me that we should take a look at why exactly it is so important that migration talks resume between the United States and Cuba. And why they should resume soon. And why the talks are more than a simple show of the “steps” toward rapprochement being cautiously taken by the Obama administration.

We’ve gone over some of this before, but let’s review:

The United States says Cuban migrants are refugees from the island’s communist system and failed state-run economy. Cuba says that the U.S. squeezes the island economically with trade sanctions and simultaneously bestows special treatment on migrants, and that this combination pulls Cubans northward.

Indeed, the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, which still stands, allows most Cuban migrants who reach American soil to become permanent residents and receive government assistance—a privilege that migrants from no other country receive. The law as it stands certainly encourages migrants unhappy with their economic lot in Cuba to make the trek to the United States. As such, Cuba calls the Cuban Adjustment Act the “killer law,” for the number of rafters attempting to reach U.S. shores that drown every year.

It is for this reason that the migration discussions poised to begin soon between the two countries are so important: there are lives in the balance, as there always have been. Talks will almost certainly go slowly, as both nations tend to blame one another for the problems of rafters and human trafficking. Cuba’s foreign ministry, for example, says:

The migratory policy of the United States has constituted one of the most important instruments of American hostility toward the island, designed to destabilize Cuban society, discredit its political system, drain Cuba of human capital and lay the groundwork for counter-revolutionary movements tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks and aggressive acts against the Cuban people as they strive to build a new nation.

Meanwhile, the United States largely maintains that its migration policy is a product of humanitarianism, a burden it has to bear as neighbor to an oppressive regime. The claim for years has been that this great nation would dare not turn away (nor send back to Cuba, of course) the poor, politically- and socially-stifled Cuban refugees that escape the island in search of a better life.

The hope with these renewed talks is that past grudges can be put aside, and a productive and sensible bilateral migration policy can be formulated.