It was a tough period for immigrants as they waited for three months to finally get a flight out of Costa Rica.
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Cuban migrants board a bus for their journey to the Guatemala-Mexico border after they arrived at El Salvador International Airport in San Luis Talpa, El Salvador. After being flown to El Salvador, the 109 men and 71… They (Mexican immigration officials) were well prepared with a team there waiting for us.
The migrants flew from Costa Rica to El Salvador in order to sidestep a ban enacted in by Nicaragua in November that prohibits their passage via land.
Yet Costa Rica and the other governments involved are insisting that each migrant pay the trip’s $555 cost, leaving open the question of what will happen to those without funds.
“It is certainly the case that Cubans have been the beneficiaries since the Castro revolution of a very special policy that applies only to Cubans and that has been in contrast with all other nationality groups”. Thirty-two-year-old Priede, along with the other Cubans, were boarded onto a bus, given food, all the necessary visas and driven to Mexico.
Mexico on Wednesday said it plans to grant 20-day transit visas to a group of 180 Cubans who were chosen from thousands stranded in Costa Rica to continue on their long journey toward the United States.
Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez said after the plane’s departure that the trip was organized for “humanitarian” reasons and he was confident of its success. Under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, once Cubans reach the U.S. border and prove that they’re Cuban, they are allowed in with an automatic pathway to permanent residency.
Four buses carrying the Cubans crossed the Mexico-Guatemala border in Ciudad Hidalgo, many looking exhausted as they lugged backpacks and suitcases to an immigration office. That special status initially raised some resentment in Central America nations whose citizens are often deported from the US if they enter without visas. The Central Americans are coming in because they – many of them fear for their lives of those vicious gangs they have up there.
Despite improved relations between Cuba and the US, the number of migrants fleeing the island has skyrocketed in the past year. And under a long-standing policy, Cubans that make it onto USA soil get immediate asylum. Havana argues that the policy encourages Cubans to risk unsafe migratory voyages and causes a brain drain of many the country’s youngest and brightest.
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“With this action [for the Cubans], we are showing dignified treatment and respect for human rights, which are things that the administration of El Salvador’s president…is asking for our own migrants”, Martinez said.
