Announcement: Foot Policy and Immigration Status

announcement: The repeal of the wet foot, dry foot policy went into effect immediately after a Thursday afternoon announcement, according to CTV. It followed months of negotiations focused in part on getting Cuba to agree to take back people who had arrived in the U.S. Cubans fearful of an imminent end to a special immigration status bestowed during the Cold War had been flocking to the United States since the Dec. 17, 2014 announcement that the U.S. and Cuba would re-establish diplomatic relations and move toward normalization. Average Cubans and opponents of the island's communist leaders said they expected pressure for reform to increase with the elimination of a mechanism that siphoned off the island's most dissatisfied citizens and turned them into sources of remittances supporting relatives who remained on the island. About 100,000 left for the United States after the declaration of detente, many flooding overland through South and Central America and Mexico in an exodus that irritated U.S. allies and other immigrant groups and spawned bitter complaints from the Cuban government. Obama is using an administrative rule change to end the policy. It was creating serious problems for the security of Cuba, for the security of the United States and for the security of our citizens left vulnerable to human trafficking, migratory fraud and violence as a result of the incentives created by these preferential policies, said Josefina Vidal, Cuba's top diplomat for U.S. affairs. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.