WASHINGTON-The foreign minister of Costa Rica has called on the United States to abandon the Cuban Adjustment Act, calling it largely responsible for attracting tens of thousands of Cubans to Latin American countries, which they then use as a springboard to get to the United States.
Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said Costa Rica and other transit countries pay the consequences of the law that all but guaranteed Cubans' admission to the United States, by permitting those who reach the U.S. to stay there. Now that Cuba and the United States have restored relations, Gonzalez questions the need for a law constructed during the Cold War, he said.
"We don't disregard the humanitarian perspective," Gonzalez said in an interview. "But this has cost us millions of dollars-and millions of dollars that we don't have available. Our people are claiming how is it possible that you don't invest in your own people and you spend millions of dollars on handling migrants?"
Costa Rica was at the center of the controversy this year when thousands of Cubans were stranded after officials broke up a smuggling ring that was bringing them from Ecuador. Gonzalez said the United States must do more than urge the countries to better enforce their immigration laws.
Largely at the behest of the Obama administration, the governments of Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama have increased their efforts to keep thousands of Cubans-and migrants of other nationalities-from using those nations to get to the United States. The United States has urged Latin American leaders to tighten their borders, dismantle smuggling networks and issue travel documents only for legal travel.
The efforts have alarmed Cuban activists, who say the U.S.-encouraged crackdown will force desperate Cubans back into the ocean for the more dangerous journey through the Florida Straits.
But the U.S. push has had an effect. Officials in Colombia this month began deporting about 1,200 Cubans who had been stranded there after Panama closed its border. The Panamanian government warned 600 Cuban migrants to abandon the region or risk deportation. Mexico recently deported more than 88 Cubans.
More than 46,500 Cubans were admitted to the United States without visas during the first 10 months of the 2016 fiscal year, according to the Pew Research Center, compared with more than 43,000 in 2015 and just over 24,000 in 2014.
Colombian migration officials said they could not discuss collaboration with the United States, but noted that not only Cubans are headed to the U.S. border.