Wet feet, dry feet policy

The wet feet, dry feet policy or wet foot, dry foot policy is the name given to a former interpretation of the 1995 revision of the application of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that essentially says that anyone who fled Cuba and entered the United States would be allowed to pursue residency a year later. Prior to 1995, the US government allowed all Cubans who reached US territorial waters to remain in the US. After talks with the Cuban government, the Clinton administration came to an agreement with Cuba that it would stop admitting people intercepted in U.S. waters. For several decades thereafter, in what became known as the "Wet foot, Dry foot" policy, a Cuban caught on the waters between the two nations (with "wet feet") would summarily be sent home or to a third country. One who makes it to shore ("dry feet") gets a chance to remain in the United States, and later would qualify for expedited "legal permanent resident" status in accordance with the 1966 Act and eventually U.S. citizenship. In January 2017, the Obama administration announced the immediate end of the policy.

Between 1960 and 1980, hundreds of thousands of Cubans entered the United States under the Attorney General's parole authority, many of them arriving by boat. In 1980, a mass migration of asylum seekers—known as the Mariel boatlift—brought approximately 125,000 Cubans (and 25,000 Haitians) to South Florida over a six-month period. After declining for several years, Cuban "boat people" steadily rose from a few hundred in 1989 to a few thousand in 1993. After Castro made threatening speeches in 1994, riots ensued in Havana, and the Cuban exodus by boat escalated. The number of Cubans intercepted by the U.S. Coast Guard or the U.S. Border Patrol reached a post-Mariel high of 37,191 in 1994.

Until 1995, the United States generally had not repatriated Cubans (except certain criminal aliens on a negotiated list) under a policy established when the government became Communist within two years of the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Not only has the United States been reluctant to repatriate people to Cuba, but also the Cuban government typically has also refused to accept Cuban migrants who are excludable under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (Cubans who have been convicted of crimes in the United States pose complex problems, as Cuba is among a handful of nations that does not generally accept the return of criminal aliens.)

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