Cuba, Mexico to sign immigration pact

The Cuba and Mexican governments are expected to sign agreements designed to tackle the growing immigration problem between both countries.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque claimed that the pact would permit Mexico to repatriate undocumented Cuban migrants. (Currently, Mexico can only detain them for fifteen days and they can be freed after paying a fine). Perez Roque added that the agreement would serve to call attention to the U.S. for “artificially stimulating” illegal immigration.

Perez Roque- who is visiting Mexico City- said this morning that relations between Cuba and Mexico have improved drastically after years of diplomatic tension.

Cuban migration by sea has gone down according to the U.S. Coast Guard while migration by land has sharply increased as the Los Angeles Times noted in July:

Even before summer’s high season of human trafficking, more than 1,000 Cubans had been detained in Mexico by late June, compared with 1,359 in all of 2007. More than 11,500 made it to the U.S. border last year, 33% more than the previous year and almost double the number who arrived via Mexico in 2004.

The number of Cubans detained in Mexico has grown 500% over the last five years, a politician from Mexico’s traditionally center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party told parliament last month. The lawmaker, Edmundo Ramirez, pointed to a recent bus hijacking as evidence that the smugglers have huge economic heft and firepower at their command.

Image- BBC News (“The Mexican security services have struggled to deal with the traffickers.”)
Sources (English)- The Latin Americanist, UPI, IHT, MSNBC, Los Angeles Times
Sources (Spanish)- El Universal, Excelsior