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U.S. Offers Refuge to Cubans,
Even if They're Not From Cuba

The world-wide economic crunch has slammed shut ports of entry for immigrants almost everywhere, and in some places even produced offers of all-expense-paid trips home, courtesy of the migrants' host countries.

Thanks to a recent twist on a relic of the Cold War, however, there is a welcome mat out for an expanding number of U.S.-bound migrants -- so long as they can establish that they are citizens of Cuba, even if they have never set foot on the island.

[U.S. Offers Refuge to Cubans, Even if They're Not From Cuba]

It happened thousands of times during the fiscal year that ended in September, according to figures recently released by the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS, which oversees U.S. immigration matters, recorded nearly 41,000 residence permits issued to foreigners asking to stay under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, the law that gives haven to any Cuban fleeing the Castro regime who makes it to U.S. soil and stays at least a year.

Of those applicants receiving green cards, more than 3,400 were born in a country other than Cuba. That is up from 2,725 applicants with similar status the previous fiscal year.

Among the new green-card holders are hundreds of Cuban families from Venezuela, and smaller numbers from Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Argentina. Nine Cubans were admitted from the Ukraine, according to DHS figures.

Maria Teresa Guma, a 60-year-old Venezuelan who has been living in Florida since 2005, got her green card this past winter -- after persuading a U.S. immigration court in Miami she is also a Cuban citizen, by virtue of her parents' births in Havana more than 80 years ago. Ms. Guma's daughter-in-law in Puerto Rico got her green card last month, using a similar argument.

It is a quirk in U.S. immigration law that requires some finagling to access. Essentially, it permits dual-nationals to apply to stay in the U.S. as Cuban citizens after entering the U.S. as citizens of another country.

The vast majority of Cuban Adjustment applicants leave Cuba, either with visas allowing them to immigrate directly to the U.S., or as refugees who ride rafts to the Florida coast or escape via Central America and Mexico. But a growing number are nationals of third countries who acquire Cuban citizenship papers from Cuban consulates, then enter the U.S. as tourists from their birth countries.

Getting a tourist visa to the U.S. as a Cuban citizen is much more difficult, but once the dual nationals arrive, they reveal their Cuban citizenship and petition to stay as refugees.

Avelino Gonzalez's immigration-law practice in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood handles about a hundred Cuban Adjustment cases each year. Many weeks, he will work cases of foreigners who entered the U.S. as Venezuelans, but now seek permanent residency as Cubans. Lately, he has been handling clients who arrived from across Latin America.

"I've got cases pending now from Cubans born in Costa Rica, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, too," says Mr. Gonzalez, 43, who is himself a refugee from Cuba, and a former professor at the University of Havana's School of Law.

Another Miami immigration attorney, Sandra I. Murado, said the law doesn't require a Cuban seeking permanent residency be persecuted in his or her homeland, or even that they reside there. All that is required is that an applicant be recognized as Cuban by U.S. authorities. And since 2007, the children of Cuban exiles haven't had to make a trip to Havana for the evidence needed to back up their claim.

The recent appearance of third-country Cubans on U.S. immigration-court dockets stems from an interpretation of the 1966 law that emerged from a case argued two years ago, an appeal known as "Matter of Vazquez." That case established precedent in dealing with Cuban nationals under the Cuban Adjustment Act, ruling that Cubans applying for residency in the U.S. are no longer required to prove their bona fides exclusively from documents issued to them in Cuba, such as passports or birth certificates. U.S. immigration officials agreed to also accept birth documents issued by Cuban consulates abroad.

Venezuela, where more than 50,000 Cuban exiles settled in the 1960s, witnessed a surge of second-generation Cubans visiting Cuba's two consulates in the country, seeking overseas birth certificates. Cuban officials charge about $200 to process each request, which involves bureaucrats in Havana tracking down the birth records of the applicant's mother or father, and certifying that the offspring also have a right to Cuban citizenship. The entire process can take a year or more.

It is worth the time and expense, says Miguel de la Vega, a former marketing executive in Venezuela for the U.S. agribusiness titan Cargill Inc., whose father fled Cuba in 1959, the year Fidel Castro's revolutionaries came to power. He entered the U.S. as a Venezuelan on a tourist visa, but applied to stay as a Cuban.

Mr. de la Vega counts at least a half-dozen of his own kinfolk as newly arrived in Florida this way, with two going through the process now in Venezuela. None has ever experienced life under Castro. "We're grateful to a country that gives us this opportunity," he says.

Mr. de la Vega says he left Venezuela for much the same reason his father fled Cuba: dissatisfaction with government policies that wrecked the local economy. Now that he has permanent U.S. residency, he is free to travel anywhere in Latin America on business. Last week, he was back in Venezuela.