\u201cOne of my greatest hopes has just been dashed. The immense joy I felt on December 17, 2014 cannot compare with the immense sadness I have felt now. I can undoubtedly tell you that this is one of the saddest days of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is Julio C\u00e9sar Hern\u00e1ndez Labastida at 11 on the night of last January 12, a few hours after U.S. President Barack Obama announced the end of the \u201cdry foot \/ wet foot\u201d policy.<\/p>\n
While surfing in the WiFi zone of Havana\u2019s La Rampa, Hern\u00e1ndez Labastida found the press release with the information. Not believing what he was reading, to make sure the 28-year-old industrial engineer followed his friends\u2019 comments on Facebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cI already had plans and the necessary coordination to be in the United States at the latest in March. Of course it would be through the border with Mexico, because getting a visa is impossible: I\u2019ve already tried three times and nothing. Now I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do, I don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dayron D\u00edaz Jim\u00e9nez, a 24-year-old self-employed, also saw his plans dashed. \u201cOn January 10 I was given a visa to travel to Mexico for 10 years. Less than 48 hours later I found out about that political decision that changed my future. What am I going to do now? I had planned to cross into the U.S. How am I going to recover the money I spent on the paperwork?\u201d he asks himself insisting on the questions as if that were to get him near to some answer.<\/p>\n
The news spread like wildfire among Cubans. L\u00e1zaro Vald\u00e9s, a 25-year-old cybernetician, found out through an SMS sent to him by a friend. \u201cMy reaction was that of incredulity, of suspicion. Who actually was asking in Cuba for the elimination of the wet foot, dry foot? It seemed as if that was never going to change.\u201d<\/p>\n
Engineer in Telecommunications David Rivera Urrutia, 34, has conflicting emotions. Although he considers that the decision \u201cdeprives many Cubans of chasing the American dream and achieving an economic improvement,\u201d he understands that \u201cthe risks to reach the United States will decrease and, therefore, the unnecessary deaths of emigrants will be reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the other side of the Straits of Florida many give a sigh of relief for having evaded in extremis that situation. \u201cI was saved by an inch,\u201d explains Jorge Fern\u00e1ndez Germ\u00e1n, who arrived in Florida less than a month ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned about the people over there [Cuba]. Many of them are on their way, they have sold their homes, their belongings, everything, and if they are returned they have to start from scratch, and they will surely be in debt up to their necks,\u201d he commented.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
The repeal of this measure, which arrived barely eight days before the end of Barack Obama\u2019s presidential term in office, took many by surprise: they consider that the outgoing president got ahead of a decision that was expected Donald Trump would make.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t cross my mind that Obama would do that now. Why now, when he had such little time left? Even if they say it is for the best, to me it\u2019s as if the agreement will create more danger for the Cubans: the ones who have made up their minds to leave will do so no matter what. It could happen that the amount will decrease, but the risks, the difficulties and the death of Cubans crossing the border are going to increase,\u201d D\u00edaz Jim\u00e9nez predicts.<\/p>\n
Starting with Donald Trump\u2019s election as president last November 8, many Cubans feared a decision of this type. They based this on the rumors and on the anti-immigrant statements during the New York magnate\u2019s campaign. That\u2019s why some of them decided to step up the trip before next January 20, the date of the new White House occupant\u2019s inauguration.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe news deeply surprises me. Since the reestablishment of bilateral relations there were comments about the possibility, but we thought it was the U.S. Congress\u2019 faculty to make the decision. Why can the president not do away with the blockade but limits emigration? In what position does he leave us ordinary Cubans?\u201d Cybernetician Vald\u00e9s Guti\u00e9rrez wonders.<\/p>\n
Apropos this subject, Arturo L\u00f3pez-Levy, a professor of U.S. and Latin American politics of the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley, said to OnCuba<\/strong> that \u201cit is one more step in the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States, reaping the results of important negotiation processes that have taken place between the two countries since December 17, 2014. It leaves an important legacy for the Trump administration, which turned the migration issue into the cornerstone of his policy and in the context of the Cuban-American right-wing context of putting an end to the type of emigration that was Cuba in recent years, which is adverse to their regime change program through economic suffocation and implosion.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a question,\u201d he adds, \u201cof an alignment of political positions, the interest of the Cuban government and that of Obama to culminate the negotiating process and make the U.S. opening to Cuba as irreversible as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n L\u00f3pez-Levy considers that it will be \u201cdifficult for Trump to undo that annulment because it would not justify his restoring a privileged treatment for Cubans when he has proclaimed an interest in promoting order and coherence in that aspect of U.S. foreign policy. The danger would also come up of causing a migration stampede from Cuba, which the Department of Homeland Security considers a nightmare.<\/p>\n The sudden elimination of the wet foot \/ dry foot policy can have a notable impact on the migration dynamics between Cuba and its northern neighbor. During the fiscal year of 2015, more than 45,000 Cubans reached U.S. territory. Eighty percent of them did so thanks to that facility.<\/p>\n Despite the numerous difficulties, the tendency toward the increase in the flow had shot up. Suffice it to point out that in 2014 the figure did not surpass the 25,500 and in 2013 it was barely over 13,000 \u00e9migr\u00e9s.<\/p>\n Despite abandoning the island, that enormous mass of population maintained family and economic ties with their country of origin. This is revealed by the 3.354 billion dollars in remittances during 2015 (an all-time record), as is revealed in an article of the U.S. Havana Consulting Group consultancy office. The Cuban economy, which this year contracted 0.9 percent, will thus see how one of its principal means of income is restricted.<\/p>\n Another impact on the economy could be confirmed in the tourist sector, which had in the Cuban Americans one of the market\u2019s most dynamic segments. Of the 3.5 million foreign visitors in 2015, almost 540,000 belonged to that community. The slowdown in the growth of that population \u2013 an intrinsic result of the repeal of the wet foot \/ dry foot policy \u2013 could put on ice the expansion of that tourist group on the island.<\/p>\n During 2016, the flow of foreign visitors to the island grew to four million and it is expected that for the upcoming years the figure will continue increasing. The country of origin with the highest increase was the United States, with a hike of 74 percent with respect to the previous year, which translates into the visit of almost 290,000 U.S. citizens in these 12 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cOne of my greatest hopes has just been dashed. The immense joy I felt on December 17, 2014 cannot compare with the immense sadness I have felt now. I can undoubtedly tell you that this is one of the saddest days of my life.\u201d This is Julio C\u00e9sar Hern\u00e1ndez Labastida at 11 on the night […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3446,"featured_media":84697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13911],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[33920,13217],"class_list":["post-84685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-migrations-in-cuba"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSOME CALCULATIONS<\/h3>\n