Immigrants qualify as Cuban
Under US law, refugees don’t actually have to be from Cuba
A unique immigration law meant to give refuge to Cubans fleeing the Communist regime has become a fast track to the United States for immigrants who never even lived on the island.
These immigrants weren’t born in Cuba. They never suffered under the Castro government. Yet the United States welcomed them as refugees and moved them to the front of the immigration line — simply because one of their parents was Cuban.
A single clause in the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 has enabled Venezuelans, Mexicans, Brazilians and others to enjoy its extraordinary benefits. They’re taking advantage of the quick residency status the U.S. began offering to Cubans escaping their homeland a half-century ago.
“It has nothing to do with what Congress intended when they passed the Cuban Adjustment Act,” said Phil Peters, a former State Department appointee who has testified before Congress on Cuba matters. “They have no connection to Cuba other than the origin of their parents.”
In the past seven years, 1,074 natives of countries including Russia, Angola, Spain and even Kazakhstan have become permanent U.S. residents by claiming Cuban citizenship under the adjustment act, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Victor Arrieta, a Brazilian whose father left Cuba before Fidel Castro came to power, took advantage of the law’s interpretation to remain in the United States after his visa expired.
“I benefited from it,” said Arrieta, 38, the track coach at a Miami prep school. “I was not fleeing communism. I’ve never been to Cuba.”
These descendants are benefiting from the most generous rules in U.S. immigration law. The Cuban Adjustment Act allows Cubans to become permanent residents in a year, far more quickly than most other immigrants.
This parent provision is yet another illustration of how the law has been used in ways never envisioned when Congress enacted it nearly five decades ago. In a yearlong investigation published in January, the Sun Sentinel documented how the act had provided easy access to the United States for immigrants from Cuba who stole $2 billion over two decades.
The act provides a quick path to legal residency for any “native or citizen of Cuba.” U.S. immigration authorities rely on the home country’s definition of a “citizen” — and Cuba defines “citizen” as anyone born to a Cuban parent, anywhere. That definition is not unusual, but the payoff is especially high when an immigrant can claim Cuban citizenship.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Jeffrey N. Brauwerman, a former immigration judge, argues the law was intended “for Cubans coming from Cuba, not for Cubans coming from around the world.”
The U.S. immigration agency has determined that children born to a Cuban parent qualified, even if they never spent a day on the island. Emilio González, the nation’s former top immigration official, said the act “doesn’t talk about Cubans born in Cuba, Cubans born in third countries, Cubans born on a boat. It just says ‘Cubans.’ ”
Never lived in Cuba
Two immigration rulings in Miami made it easier for immigrants who’ve never been to Cuba to capitalize on America’s good will toward those fleeing the Castro government.
A 2006 decision clarified that applicants needn’t have lived in Cuba. It also gave them more options for documenting their Cuban heritage, allowing them to use certificates of citizenship available from Cuban consulates in other countries. Then a 2007 ruling said documentation no longer had to verify citizenship, just birth to a Cuban parent.
González adopted those rulings as policy nationwide. He told the Sun Sentinel that lawyers on his staff advised him that if they fought the cases, the agency would lose.
The law doesn’t discriminate between people born in Cuba and those born to a Cuban parent in another country, said González, who was born in Havana and came to the U.S. as a child. “If you don’t want to do it that way, I guess you should change the law.”
The U.S. immigration agency would provide the Sun Sentinel only with the number of non-Cuba natives admitted since 2008, but a spokesman said the total over the duration of the act is in the thousands.
“I would say very few of them have been to the island of Cuba,” said Stephen Bander, a Miami Shores immigration lawyer who handles such cases.
Bander’s firm alone has represented 252 applicants since 2002. His firm even got a Colombian approved whose only connection to Cuba was a grandparent born there, though Bander said grandparent cases are rare and untested.
Venezuelan applicants surge
In Venezuela, those who have used the Cuban-parent route say it is becoming a well-known path to the United States. In the past five years, Venezuelans fleeing oppression under Hugo Chávez or Nicolás Maduro have made up about onequarter of the non-native Cubans approved for permanent residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act.
“The volume of these cases has increased dramatically due to the political and economic situation in Venezuela,” Bander said.
The South American nation has been plagued with food shortages, violence and reports of political detention. Beginning under Chávez, the government has crushed labor unions and seized private farms and businesses. Venezuelan security forces have shot and killed unarmed protesters, including a 14-year-old boy earlier this year.
Carolina Bastidas and her family began looking for a way out as wages fell and violence rose. “There is a huge homicide rate, so there is a lot of insecurity.”
She and her husband, both university biologists, made about $500 a month each. They could have immigrated to the U.S. under a work visa for college-educated people in specialty occupations, but that would have taken at least six years, she said. Born in Caracas to a Venezuelan father and Cuban mother, Bastidas found a quicker route: the Cuban Adjustment Act.
In 2011, she brought her husband and two children to the U.S. They settled in Boston and became permanent residents.
She’d never been to Cuba but learned of the shortcut in U.S. immigration law in Venezuela, where she said it is “very common knowledge.”
Alberto Maza, a Venezuelan with a Cuban father, qualified under the act to stay in the U.S. after completing his master’s degree in engineering in 2011.
An oil field engineer in Denver, he now gets calls from other Venezuelans asking about the process. “I’ve been contacted by a couple of friends. ‘Hey, I heard you did that. I have a grandparent who was Cuban.’ ”
The Cuban heritage strategy gives certain Venezuelans advantages not available to their country- men.
Those immigrants are getting “preference over other Venezuelans who also have to wait in line for toilet paper but don’t have a dad born in Cuba. That’s ridiculous,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, a nonpartisan research group.
Miami immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen, however, argues that the special protection is warranted for the children of Cubans escaping repression, as in Venezuela.
“Here you have Cubans who fled Castro and went to live in Venezuela, and now they get to Venezuela and they have a crazier, less educated, less able, more idiotic Castro clone in Mr. Maduro,” Allen said. “So, obviously, their children are having a miserable life there.”
‘Completely crazy’
While Venezuela is home to a sizable Cuban population, hundreds of thousands of other Cubans have spread out across the globe, with large concentrations in Spain, Italy, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Canada, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. Thousands of their children are eligible to immigrate to the U.S. as Cuban refugees.
“A Cuban who lived comfortably in Madrid for 20 years can come to the U.S. and get a green card and federal benefits,” said Peters, the former State Department appointee. “It’s completely crazy.”
These immigrants enter the U.S. on tourist visas or with passports from their native countries and after a year can apply for residency as Cubans. Their fellow countrymen who have no Cuban heritage are, for the most part, out of luck.
“It’s very difficult right now to immigrate lawfully to the United States unless you have an immediate relative like a spouse that’s a U.S. citizen or you’re the parent of a U.S. citizen child that’s over 21,” said Bander, the immigration attorney.
The Cuban ancestry advantage is such a boost it has created a black market for fake Cuban birth certificates. Most impostors pose as Cuban-born immigrants, but authorities now are seeing some claiming a Cuban parent. Of 20 people charged in a 2013 fake birth certificate ring in South Florida, three had falsely claimed their mothers were Cuban.
Cuban diplomats also have found a way to benefit from immigrants seeking to document their Cuban heritage, said González, the former U.S. immigration chief who now oversees operations at Miami International Airport.
“You walk into a Cuban consulate and say: ‘Hey, I need a passport.’ They know why. All of a sudden a lot of money was being exchanged under the table to not only get a passport but to expedite it,” he said.
Maza, the Venezuelanborn engineer, obtained the necessary paperwork from a Cuban consulate in that country. He is grateful to have benefited from the Cuban Adjustment Act and said it should continue to apply to second-generation Cubans outside the island, whose families were displaced because of the Castro government.
“The situation in Cuba extends beyond the frontiers of Cuba,” he said. “Cubans are all over the place because of what is happening there.”
Arrieta, the track coach, said some of his Cuban family settled in Miami while his father went to Brazil. He came to the U.S. on a tourist visa, then switched to a student visa and stayed — years later discovering the Cuban Adjustment Act through a news story.
“I thought, ‘This is great,’ ” Arrieta said. “I’ve had a great joy of living here.”
He, too, thinks the law should continue applying to foreign-born children with a Cuban parent.
“I don’t think they should change that yet unless the regime in Cuba changes,” Arrieta said. “As long as it’s good for the ones that live in Cuba, it should be good for everybody.”
To others, the loophole is just another example of the overreach of the Cuban Adjustment Act.
“It’s a really extraordinary privilege the Cubans are afforded in U.S. immigration law,” said Marc Rosenblum, an immigration expert for the Migration Policy Institute. “Extending it to the next generation is even more extraordinary.”
“I benefited from it. I was not fleeing communism. I’ve never been to Cuba.” Victor Arrieta, 38, who received his U.S. citizenship in 2009. He is from Brazil; his father was born in Cuba but left before Fidel Castro came to power.