Welcome to the USA

Treatment of Cubans, Central Americans, varies

They are crossing the border here by the hundreds each day, approved to enter the United States in a matter of hours. They are part of a fast-rising influx of Cubans who walk out to a Laredo street and are greeted by volunteers from Cubanos en Libertad, or Cubans in Freedom, a nonprofit.

The volunteers help them arrange travel to their American destination and start applying for work permits and federal benefits like food stamps and Medicaid, available by law to Cubans immediately after their arrival.

The friendly reception given the Cubans is a stark contrast with the treatment of Central American families fleeing violence in their countries. It is creating tensions in this predominantly Mexican-American city, where residents saw how Central American migrants, who came in an influx in 2014, were detained by the Border Patrol and ordered to appear in immigration courts.

“The people here are starting to feel resentment,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, whose congressional district includes the city.

“They are asking, is it fair that the Cubans get to stay and the Central Americans are being deported?” Cuellar said.

The disparity was in sharp relief last week, as Pope Francis visited the border at El Paso and offered prayers for the many migrants who have faced danger or arrest trying to cross the U.S. border.

A group of veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq held two protests by the border in Laredo, saying the federal government was spending money on Cubans when it was not meeting the needs of people here.

“We make everyone from Central America wait in line, while the Cubans walk in even though they are not refugees,” said Gabriel Lopez, a Mexican-American Navy veteran who is president of the group of veterans. “We are saying, don’t open the borders to Cubans and give them instant benefits while we have American veterans living on the streets.”

Already about 12,100 Cubans entered through Laredo and other Texas border stations in the last three months of 2015. Border officials say as many as 48,000 Cubans could cross here this year, more than in the last two years combined.

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, passed in 1966 in the early years of enmity with Fidel Castro, any Cuban who sets foot on U.S. soil is given permission to enter, known as parole. They are also eligible for federal welfare benefits for nine months. After a year, they can apply for permanent residency, a gateway to citizenship.

The recent exodus from Cuba began in mid-2014, even before President Barack Obama announced a restoration of diplomatic relations. President Raúl Castro allowed Cubans to leave the country without exit visas. Many Cubans have said that rumors that the special entry to the U.S. would be canceled had caused them to pack up and go.

“The rumors are unfounded,” Alan Bersin, assistant secretary of Homeland Security, said, seeking to dispel the fears.

“The Cuban Adjustment Act is still in effect and is part of the overall immigration policy.”

Cuellar has called for the act to be repealed, but he acknowledges there is little prospect that Congress will act this year.

At the border, Cubans are fingerprinted and pass through routine criminal and terrorism background checks. There is no special vetting for Cubans, no medical examinations or vaccination requirements.

“Right now I feel like the freest Cuban in the whole world,” said Rodny Nápoles, 39, a coach of the Cuban national women’s water polo team who crossed into Laredo in early February.

Recently, the first direct flights from northern Costa Rica to the Mexican city just across the border brought more than 300 Cubans, including at least 41 pregnant women and their families.

One of them, Yadelys Rodríguez Martín, 28, who was 19 weeks pregnant, sat down to rest and enjoy a moment of relief on the front steps of Cubanos en Libertad, right after emerging from the border station.

After traveling through Ecuador and being stuck for three months in Costa Rica because of a political dispute in the region, she said she was stunned by how quickly she had been admitted into the United States.

“We are not used to things happening so fast,” Rodríguez said. Like many Cubans arriving here, she left, she said, to escape a moribund economy. As a civil engineer, she was earning the equivalent of $25 a month.

But Laredo residents recall the days in 2014 when women and children from Central America, who said they were fleeing from murderous criminal gangs, were packed in frigid detention cells here and crowded the bus station after they were released carrying only orders for a date before a judge. With no blanket admission, they faced uphill battles in court to win asylum that often ended in deportation.

At the border station, one Cuban, Milton Borges González, 38, said he was “the happiest man on earth” when his pregnant wife, Lisbeth Torres, emerged with her parole in hand. He had come before her and was living in Houston.

“I came to work,” Borges said, “and here they let you work and they pay you if you work. The United States gives us a lot of help because we are Cubans,” he said. “Thank God for that.”