Miami-Dade commission urges Congress to revise Cuban Adjustment Act
The most unusual of votes about U.S.-Cuba policy took place Wednesday — not in Washington or Havana, but in Miami.
After a wrought discussion, the Miami-Dade County Commission unanimously agreed to ask Congress to revise the Cuban Adjustment Act, a 1966 federal law that allows Cubans, unlike any other foreigners, to apply for U.S. residency one year and one day after arriving.
As a local government, the commission has no foreign-policy authority. But as a legislative body in the home of the country’s largest Cuban community, the vote represents a symbolic acknowledgment — even from longtime hardliners — that at least portions of U.S.-Cuba policy needs a fresh look.
“This is a good thing that has been misused in some cases, but it doesn’t mean we have to throw it away,” Commissioner Javier Souto, a Cuban-born Republican, said of the CAA. “We shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”
Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, the Republican son of Cuban immigrants who became U.S. residents thanks to the law, had proposed asking Congress to repeal it altogether — a bold request that drew attention among Cuban exiles already on edge about President Obama’s move to normalize relations with the island’s communist regime.
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