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Cuba
accuses U.S. of encouraging
immigrant smuggling
Cuba's leading newspaper Tuesday
accused Washington of
encouraging the smuggling of
Cubans to the United States in
small boats, describing the
trade as a "poisonous
trafficking."
In an article entitled "the
humiliating dirt of failure",
the Granma newspaper reported a
recent failed human smuggling by
14 Cubans who used a boat to
pick up a group of women and
children at Guajaibon beach in
the region of Havana.
The boat sank somewhere between
Cuba and Florida, the United
States, and the authorities
found a woman body ashore and
arresteda man and a woman
involved in the smuggling, it
said.
Recently, the number of illegal
boats coming from Florida to
ferry Cubans to the United
States has risen, the paper
said. It accused the U.S.
government of becoming ever more
tolerant of such activities,
noting that the Cuban Adjustment
Law should be responsible for
the death of thousands of
Cubans.
Under the so-called U.S.
"wet-foot, dry-foot" policy,
Cubans who are interdicted at
sea are routinely taken back to
Cuba, while those who manage to
set foot on land are allowed to
stay.
The U.S. Coast Guard picked up
2,866 Cubans at sea in 2005,
nearly twice as many as last
year and the highest number
since 1994. More than 200
migrants died while trying to
reach the United States by sea
in the past five years.
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