TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 175

E/CN.4/1503

Annex I page 32

99.

Throughout the 1970s, however, demand for US visas built up so far in excess of supply that some desperates began crashing vehicles into the compounds

compounds of the Peruvian and Venezuelan embassies in attempts to obtain asylum. When at the end of March 1980 President Castro removed police protec- tion from around the compound of the Peruvian embassy, announc- ing simultaneously that he was changing the rules governing exit visas - so that anyone accepted by another country would be free to leave ten thousand people immediately besieged the embassy.

-

A few days later, Castro's announcement of the opening of the port of Mariel

port of Mariel to allow for the departure of those who wished to leave caused hundreds of privately-owned American vessels, many operated or chartered by Cuban-Americans, to sail from Florida to Mariel where boat

boat captains were in- formed that they would be permitted to take out the family and friends they sought on condition that they would transport also such other passengers as the Cuban authorities saw fit to select. It was soon evident that in addition to those volun- tarily choosing to leave, others were being expelled.

The

100. Alarmed at this turn of events, the President of the United States made a statement on 14 May saying that his administration would "implement a five-point program to permit safe and orderly passage from Cuba for those people who sought freedom in the U.S.", but stressing that these poeple would have to be screened "to ensure legality and order". The Cuban authorities, however, did not heed this stipulation. arrival within the space of a few weeks of over 120 000 Cubans a contingency for which US immigration had to make special urgent provision, the recently-approved Refugee Act designed to unify existing refugee policy being inadequate to deal with the problem. A new admissions category, "Cuban-Haitian entrant" was created in June 1980 to define the status and rights of the new arrivals.

was

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101. The same month, the then US Coordinator for Refugee Affairs in the Department of State, Victor H. Palmieri, said of the newly-arrived Cubans that their reasons for coming were diverse political, familial,

and economic and personal indeed, individual registrations proved that a high proportion had relatives in the United States, while indicating that some of the arrivals had political motives for leaving. Newspaper reports at that time suggested that other principal motivations were frustations after years of restricted consumer goods and a sense of alienation from the egalitarian and collectivist life-style of Cuban society. The majority of the new arrivals were found to have a very similar socio-economic profile to those who had arrived from Cuba in the 1960s and early 1970s. Most had left jobs as labourers, skilled or semi-skilled craftsmen, machine operators or technicians.

technicians. A portion of the entrant group much commented upon in the press was of generally unskilled, uneducated young men who had spent time in jail or mental institutions or as unemployed city dwellers.

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