Obama ends open door policy for Cuba migrants
US President Barack Obama on Thursday ended a decades-old policy that allowed Cuban migrants who arrived illegally on US soil to stay.
In one of his final acts before leaving the White House, he scrapped rules allowing those fleeing communist Cuba and reaching American territory a fast track to permanent resident status.
Obama said the move would "bring greater consistency to our immigration policy."
The Cuban government welcomed the decision, calling it "an important step forward in bilateral relations."
Preferential immigration treatment for Cuban immigrants enticed millions to flee the island, fueling economic stasis and a severe "brain drain."
Meanwhile in the United States, the growing Cuban-American population become a potent political, cultural and economic force. There are around 1.8 million Cuban-Americans today, including two Republican 2016 presidential candidates, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.
Passed in 1966, the Cuban Adjustment Act has offered any citizen of Cuba admission and permanent residence in the United States after spending one year in the country, with no yearly quota on immigrants.
However, then-president Bill Clinton decided in 1995 that Cubans intercepted at sea would be sent home under the policy Obama scrapped, which became known as "wetfoot/dryfoot."
However, Rubio, a senator from Florida, called Obama's decision "absurd."
But many Cubans in Panama -- a waypoint on their arduous overland trek to the United States -- reacted with fury.
"Obama has screwed all Cubans," Yadiel Cruz, a 33-year-old in a Catholic shelter in Panama City, told AFP on learning the US president had suddenly made it tougher for migrants like him to get into America.
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