Doctor defections a test for Cuba-U.S. thaw

As he came of age in Cuba, Jose Angel Sanchez enrolled in medical school for the usual reasons: to help the sick and to make a better living than most in his destitute eastern town. But he had another motive, too.

“It was also a way out of Cuba,” said Sanchez, 29, who moved to the United States in September, four years after he graduated as a general practitioner.

Sanchez’s escape route was set up by the U.S. government, under a 2006 program that offers U.S. residency to Cuban medical workers posted overseas. It is a door through which thousands of Cuban health workers have emigrated — and one that President Raul Castro is determined to close.

One year after Cuba and the United States announced their thaw, policies such as this one, which hail from a more hostile era, show that diplomacy after five decades of tensions will not be as easy as the raising of embassy flags. The number of Cuban medical professionals who defected for residency in the United States reached a record this year, putting a crimp in the newly restored relations.

The Department of Homeland Security fast-tracks residency for Cuban medical professionals who defect, but it has been slowed by the swell of applications, accusations of fraud and delays that left hundreds of people such as Sanchez stranded in Colombia for months this year.

Cuba denounced the program in recent weeks as the two nations met to discuss U.S. immigration rules that give Cubans special opportunities to enter the United States and become residents.

With so many Cubans worried that the coveted status will melt away now that diplomatic relations have been established with Havana, there has been a wave of people from all professions leaving the island over the past year.

That has created a migration crisis, the Castro government contends, stranding thousands of Cuban migrants in Central America as they try to make their way over land to the United States.

Robert Muse, a Washington-based lawyer who specializes in U.S.-Cuban law, called the medical workers program an “exploding cigar left over by the Bush administration” that President Barack Obama should eliminate.