Claudia Diaz doesn’t remember immigrating to the U.S. when she was 3 years old, but her family was only allowed to stay through the “wet foot, dry foot” policy.
On Thursday, when Diaz learned President Barack Obama ended the policy, which provided Cubans a fast track to citizenship, she felt sad that her aunts and uncles still in Cuba now had fewer options and opportunities to come to the U.S. But then Diaz realized Cubans held a special privilege, she said, which changed her perspective on the matter.
“Cubans had this policy when other immigrants are striving just as hard,” the 20-year-old UF political science junior said.
Obama announced the policy’s repeal Thursday, effective immediately, according to the Associated Press. The policy, created in 1995 by former President Bill Clinton, allowed Cubans who reached U.S. soil automatic exile and an expedited residency process.
Because Obama used administrative rule to end the policy, it could be overturned when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. If they had stayed in Cuba, by age 11 Diaz and her brother would have been sent to work camps, their parents would say.
Her parents would do anything for their children to avoid that. Diaz’s grandfather took his own life after battling with schizophrenia caused by his constant worry over the Cuban government.
This proved to be the final push for Diaz’s mother to move her family to the U.S. by plane in 2000.
“(My family) sold everything,” Diaz said.
Diaz said she believes Cubans are no longer coming to America as political refugees — they now just want to make a better life for themselves, which isn’t different from other immigrants.
“I think the political-asylum seekers had already fled at this point,” she said.
Lillian Guerra, a UF Cuban and Caribbean history professor, wrote in an email that U.S.’s policy of treating Cubans differently than other Latin Americans fleeing dictatorships was hypocritical.
The revoked policy will cause Cubans upset with the government to take action rather than flee the country, she said.
“I am deeply convinced that the only way Cubans can change Cuba is by taking the power of protest into their own hands — not by escaping to Miami,” she said.
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