Obama Ends Cubans’ Immigration Preference as Part of Opening
- U.S. move eliminates decades-old ‘wet foot, dry foot’ policy
- Cubans already in U.S. will retain their legal residency
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President Barack Obama ended a decades-old policy of granting residency to Cubans who enter the U.S. without a visa, a final step in the outgoing president’s move to reverse the Cold-War isolation of the Caribbean nation.
Obama’s order now places President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned as an opponent both of current immigration flows and of normalizing relations with Cuba, in the position of either accepting another opening to Cuba or having one of his early actions in office be making it easier for immigrants to come into the country.