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01/10/13 -  Agencia de Información Nacional (Habana) - Washington Uses Migration Issues as part of its Hostile Policy on Cuba

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 10 (ACN) The United States used the migration issue as an instrument of its hostile policy on Cuba to destabilize the country and discredit the revolutionary process, said the director of the Center for International Migration Studies at the University of Havana, Ileana Sorolla.

Since 1966, the US Cuban Adjustment Act favors the entrance in US territory of Cubans who get there illegally, while at the same time hinders legal migration by manipulating the visa-granting policy, the expert said as cited by PL news agency.

However, Sorolla explained, the United States adopted over 200 laws since 2008 aimed at discouraging irregular immigration by taking measures against the employment of undocumented persons and by restricting access to social assistance.

In an article published on Granma newspaper, the expert said that Washington has made the migration issue part of a Cold War scheme. "The United States try to present Cuba as responsible for this problem while hiding the truth about the Cuba Adjustment Act and the wet-feet-dry-feet policy, which are the real obstacles to achieve normal migration flow between the two countries.

Sorolla said that the Cuban Adjustment Act in particular hinders any advancement of achieve a regular, orderly and safe flow of persons, and it is a legal paradox and a political anachronism.
  
The expert made the analysis just few days before new Cuban migration regulations go into force, which simplify and ease travel proceedings for Cubans.

While announcing the new measures in October 2012, Cuban authorities said that the action are not the result of pressures, but an expression of the sovereign will of the nation in tune with the update of the Cuban economic model and with the current migration scenario.