Raft still exit option for Cuban after 18 tries

Raft still exit option for Cuban after 18 tries
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
by Esteban Israel

HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): A Cuban rafter who was sent back to communist
Cuba by the United States 11 months ago said on Monday he would take to
the sea again in a 19th bid to get to Florida if Cuban authorities do
not allow him to emigrate legally.

"I want to go legally. I have earned the right," said Emiliano Batista,
a 32-year-old unemployed waiter.

"I do not want to push off into the sea again, but if I have to I will,"
said Batista whose has been intercepted by Cuban and US Coast Guards or
frustrated by engine failure on previous attempts to leave Cuba.

Batista managed to make it across 90 miles of perilous Florida Straits
waters in January in a makeshift motor boat crowded with would-be
emigres dreaming of a better life in the United States.

The 15 migrants, including three small children, were found clinging to
an old, disconnected bridge in the Florida Keys on January 5 and
repatriated to Cuba by the US Coast Guard.

Under the United States' "wet foot, dry foot" immigration policy toward
Cuba, boat people intercepted at sea are usually returned to the
Caribbean island, while those who reach US soil are generally allowed to
stay.

Since the Cubans landed on a part of the old Seven Mile Bridge, built in
the 1930s and now used as a fishing pier, that is no longer connected to
land, Coast Guard officials decided they were not on US soil and
returned them to Cuba.

The decision sparked controversy among south Florida's Cuban exiles, who
sued on the migrants' behalf. A U.S. judge ruled in February that the
group had been sent back illegally and the United States agreed to give
them visas to emigrate.

But the government of ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has denied them
exit permits.

Seven of the group lost patience and set off again last week in a flimsy
vessel. This time they made it across and landed on Friday near Bahia
Honda State Park in the lower Florida Keys.

Those who stayed behind in Cuba were told by US diplomats on Monday to
avoid risking their lives and wait for Cuban permission to leave.

"They say we have to wait and wait. We have been waiting all this time,"
Noel Reyes, an unemployed restaurant worker, said outside the US
Interests Section in Havana.

Cuban authorities issued the group passports, but has withheld final
permit to leave the country, and it is just a question of time before
frustration will lead Batista to build a new boat and attempt the
crossing again.

US security officials have said they are preparing for the possibility
that Castro's death could spark a massive wave of migration from the
island nation.

Twenty-five Cuban men and women came ashore near Longboat Key near
Sarasota on Florida's Gulf Coast before dawn on Monday, police said.
They had left Cuba on Friday and had not eaten since Thursday evening.

Cuba blames Washington for encouraging illegal voyages by offering
Cubans who make it across automatic residency. The US government says it
has tried to foster safe and orderly migration by granting at least
20,000 visas a year under an agreement signed after the 1994 rafter
crisis, when more than 35,000 Cubans pushed off in rafts and rubber tires.

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