[freedomtowernight_edited.jpg] 26th Parallel: White House to Meet with Exiles?

Saturday, February 25, 2006

White House to Meet with Exiles?

Let's hope this isn't a set-up for another dissapointment, any that the meeting can produce some fruitful results.

White House 'committed' to meeting exile leaders

A White House meeting with Cuban exile leaders to discuss the wet-foot, dry-foot policy may be held within two weeks.

BY OSCAR CORRAL
ocorral@MiamiHerald.com

The White House and Cuban-American leaders are finalizing the date for a meeting next month to discuss the Cuban migration accords and the controversial wet-foot, dry-foot policy.

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the tentative date for the meeting is March 8.

White House spokesman Blair Jones did not confirm a date, but said, ``We are committed to holding a meeting as soon as possible.''

The White House agreed last month to meet with Cuban-American leaders to discuss U.S.-Cuba migration policy after a well-known Cuban exile activist went on a hunger strike to protest the repatriation of 15 Cuban migrants who had been found by the Coast Guard standing on the pilings of the old Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys.

The Coast Guard concluded that because that section of the bridge -- which has missing pieces -- was not connected to land, the migrants were ''feet-wet'' and sent them back to Cuba.

Ros-Lehtinen and other U.S. congressional representatives had been asking the White House to review the wet-foot, dry-foot policy for years.

The policy requires that most migrants picked up at sea be repatriated, while those who make it to land usually can apply for residency.

The policy only applies to Cubans. Haitian migrants caught at sea or on U.S. land, for instance, rarely are allowed to stay in the United States.

The wet-foot, dry-foot policy was implemented under the Clinton administration in response to the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis.

Before that, most Cubans picked up at sea were brought to the United States because the policy took into account that they were fleeing a communist dictatorship.

Cuban-American leaders hoped that the Republican Bush administration would revoke, or at least change, the policy to allow the migrants access to lawyers and contact with family members on humanitarian grounds.

Two U.S. senators in Miami on Thursday agreed that the White House should review the policy. Sen. John McCain, in town for a fundraiser and to plug a new immigration bill, said the repatriation of the Cubans found on the bridge ``fueled the fire and resentment against this policy. . . . It should be reviewed.''

Sen. Bill Nelson said the Coast Guard ''wrongly applied'' the policy on the 15 migrants and agreed that it should be more humanitarian, but said it needs to be maintained to control the nation's security.

''We need a consistent way of handling wet-foot, dry-foot without some of these ridiculous things,'' Nelson said.

Ros-Lehtinen said she hopes the Bush administration responds positively.

''We hope they take our recommendations seriously,'' she said.

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