Cuban Emigration Part and Parcel of Cuban Nation

Cuba’s emigration is an essential part of the Cuban nation and its relentless pursuit of independence, the president of the island’s National Assembly, Ricardo Alarcon, said Friday during the closing of a meeting of Cubans living abroad.

The gathering in Havana attracted more than 300 Cuban nationals from 44 countries.

During his closing remarks, Alarcon lashed out at the manipulation by the U.S. government of its migratory policy with regards to Cuba. He said Washington uses that policy as “a means to encourage internal destabilization and an instrument of propaganda in his old desire to destroy the Cuban Revolution.”

The Cuban top legislator said on the issue of migration Cuba had received a “cynical and discriminatory treatment” by the U.S., as demonstrated by the passage in 1966 of the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act. He noted that contrary to the common assumption, the issue of Cubans seeking to migrate is not a recent development or a consequence of the coming to power of the Revolution in 1959.

Throughout the 19th century, he recalled, there were Cubans who set up communities in the U.S. and in the Caribbean, a situation that grew as the crisis of the colonial regime on the island intensified. Up until 1958, according to official U.S. statistics, Cuba had ranked as the second largest source of immigrants for the U.S., after Mexico and followed by a third group that encompassed all the other nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, whose combined contribution of migrants to the U.S. did not exceed that of Cuba.

When it comes to legal migration to the U.S., Cuba is today far from other nations, many of which have less population than Cuba. If those statistics were to include the undocumented immigrants, none of whom are Cuban, the island would be at the bottom of the list, said Alarcon.

The president of the Cuban parliament said under the Obama administration Washington’s economic circle against the Caribbean nation has remained intact, and there is nothing that the new administration has done to bring justice to Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero and Fernando Gonzalez, in prison in the U.S., while at the same time Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch and a long list of well-known terrorists continue to enjoy impunity.

“Setting the Five free, and placing the criminals behind bars, are indispensable steps for someone who tries to appear as the initiator of a new beginning in relations with Cuba. Rhetoric and good manners can’t hide the facts that prove that little has changed in the [U.S.] Empire over the past year,” he concluded.

In a final declaration, delegates to the Havana meeting of Cubans living abroad demanded the immediate and unconditional lifting of the U.S. blockade, the release of the Cuban Five and the handing over to Cuba of the territory illegally occupied by the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo.

The participants also called on the European Union to offer a fair and nondiscriminatory treatment to Cuba, to abandon its interventionist stand and work towards a full normalization of relations with the island.