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About the Cuban Adjustment Act

Within the context of the economic war against the Cuban Revolution, the migratory policy of the United States has been one of the prime instruments of its hostility toward the Island. The purpose of that policy is to destabilize the Cuban society, to discredit its political model, to deprive Cuba from its human capital and to lay the foundations for the creation of counterrevolutionary movements in charge of perpetrating terrorist and aggressive actions against a people determined to build a new country.

Previously to the Revolution triumph, Cuban citizens who wanted to travel or to emigrate to the United States should complete the corresponding legal procedure as citizens of any other country of the world had to do.
However, starting from the first of January of 1959, United States applied a different migratory policy to Cuba, aimed, in a first moment, at offering protection and asylum to the murderers, bailiffs, torturers, embezzlers and thieves of the tyranny headed by Fulgencio Batista, while the extradition applications officially presented by Cuba against the connoted criminals were never accepted. Later on, that policy was pointed at stimulating the illegal emigration of Cuban citizens to the United States, giving priority to professionals and qualified personnel.

In a staggered way, Washington was canceling the regular flights and the ways for legal exits from Cuba, at the time that refugee's status was automatically granted to any Cuban citizen that arrived to U.S. territory. That practice reached the point of establishing special financial conditions to support Cuban emigrants.

Be enough to mention that between 1959 and 1962, 274 000 Cubans emigrated to the United States, of that amount, the first 70 000 entered in U.S. territory without mediating any migratory arrangements. The utmost expression of the criminal, immoral and discriminatory migratory US policy against Cuba is the Cuban Adjustment Act, a legislative monster adopted in 1966, with the deliberate purpose of stimulating the illegal exits of Cuban citizens to that country. Unique in its type in the world, it offers to Cubans that arrive to the United States by illegal means, a set of privileges not granted for citizens from any other nationality or country.

From 1965, due to the incongruous and arbitrary migratory policies applied by the United States against Cuba, three big migratory waves took place: Camarioca, 1965; Mariel, in 1980, and the so-called crisis of the balseros (boat people), in 1994.

After the two last migratory crisis, and as a result of them, several rounds of talks were held between Cuba and the United States which concluded with the signature of the Agreement of Normalization of the Migratory Relationships between both countries and, later, of the Migratory Agreement of September 9 1994 and the Joint Declaration, of May 2 1995.

Nevertheless, the reiterated non-fulfillments of these agreements by the U.S. party, along with their irresponsible attitude of continue encouraging the illegal emigration and the admission in U.S. territory, by virtue of the Adjustment Act, of Cubans that move there as stowaways, air or maritime ships kidnappers, or simply as " balseros ", prevent the emigration between both countries from taking place in a safe, legal and ordered way.

From the first of September, 1994, up to the present, 13 rounds of talks have been held to review the implementation of the Migratory Agreements. In this meetings, Cuba has gotten the attention about the continued irregularities committed by the United States in the accomplishment of the agreements, which contradict and violate the letter and spirit of these documents.

The obstinate application of the Cuban Adjustment Act constitutes the basis of the existent migratory problem between the two countries: the ever-growing phenomenon of the illegal emigration and the traffic or smuggling of people going to the United States.

On its part, and without any cooperation from the US government, Cuba has strictly fulfilled the subscribed Agreements taking exemplary measures against those who engage in trafficking with people.

United States won't be able to establish order in its own costs while the Cuban Adjustment Act exists and much less while that country continues financing, stimulating and improving its broadcasting methods with the aim of unceasingly encouraging the illegal exits, as part of the political and psychological war against Cuba.

As a result of these policies and the existence of this Act, the Cuban boy Elián Gonzalez was the victim of an illegal emigration attempt after the kidnapping that forced him to stay during seven months in the United States without any legal support. That event focused the attention of the international and U.S. public opinion.

Upon U.S. authorities falls the entire responsibility for the human beings, including children, that along the last three decades have perished and are still in danger of perishing, incited to carry out such adventures by an immoral, anachronistic policy absolutely lacking of ethic and human sense.

Cuba will continue to identify openly this senseless Act as a murderous legislation and will continue warning about the serious risks and perils it provokes, and Cuba won't stop denouncing those responsible for its implementation.