Doctors who defect left in limbo

MIAMI

When Cuban physician Marisol Bennette left her homeland for a mandatory assignment in Belize, she told her 11-year-old daughter that she was never coming back.

Dr. Bennette, longing for freedom and an opportunity to make more than the $20 a month most Cuban doctors earn, fled Belize in 2004 for Mexico. From there, she made the life-threatening trek across the desolate desert into Texas, like so many Cubans before her.

“When I told my daughter I’m leaving and never coming back, she made me promise to call her every week,” Dr. Bennette said, her voice trembling as she mentioned Solmari, now 16.

The United States began implementing an asylum measure for Cuban medical personnel two years ago. After establishing permanent residency in the United States, defecting Cuban doctors can seek visas for their children.

Since her arrival in the United States, Dr. Bennette said she has worked every angle imaginable to try to bring her daughter to Miami, where she works as a nurses’ assistant while trying to qualify to practice medicine in the United States.

Dr. Bennette said she has received authorization from U.S. immigration for Solmari to come to the U.S., but the Cuban government has refused permission.

“According to Cuban records, [she] is supposedly abandoned,” Dr. Bennette said. Solmari has lived with her grandparents since her mother left for Belize. Dr. Bennette is estranged from her husband, who is also a physician and lives in St. Lucia

While there is little comfort in knowing she is going to spend another Christmas separated from her daughter, Dr. Bennette has the support of dozens of other Cuban physicians who have found themselves in the same predicament.

Cuban doctors on missions in Venezuela and as far away as Qatar have sought political asylum in the United States only to find that the Cuban government won’t let their spouses and children join them.

“Many [Cuban children and spouses] have remained for years within a legal and bureaucratic maze imposed by the Cuban government, which refuses to provide the necessary exit visa, despite the children having the necessary U.S. visa and custodial permissions to leave the country,” said Sandy Acosta Cox, director of media relations at the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation (CANF).

Ms. Acosta Cox asserted that some of the children left behind by Cuban doctors have been harassed at school and in some cases have been forced to drop out.

“It’s a tactic of the regime,” she said. “These children haven’t been officially denied [visas]. They’ve just been languishing in a bureaucratic labyrinth. Many of them have been told: ’You’re the child, or wife or husband of a deserter. You’re never getting out.’”

The Cuban mission in Washington declined to comment about the allegations.

Ms. Acosta Cox called the separation of Cuban physicians from their families a “political ploy” by President Raul Castro’s government.

Others say the U.S. government is using the issue as yet another move in the decades-long diplomatic chess game between Washington and Havana.

“There are a lot of doctors that want to come to this country. Why should Cuban doctors get any preference?” said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. He added that he hoped the incoming Obama administration will take a new approach to U.S.-Cuba policy.

“I would like to see the new administration place Cuba in the same category as say North Korea in terms of immigration,” Mr. Birns said. “People fleeing for political persecution should be extended a hearing and be admitted, but people fleeing for economic reasons should have no special privileges.”

Mr. Obama has promised to lift restrictions on Cuban-Americans visiting the island or sending money to relatives there. However, according to CANF, Cuban doctors who defect are barred from returning for visits for up to seven years.

In the meantime, some Cuban doctors are going to extremes to try to bring their families here, Dr. Bennette said. She referred to immigrant smugglers who cram dozens of Cuban asylum seekers into small boats that make illegal runs across the Florida Straits in hopes of reaching the United States.

Before heading to an area hospital for the night shift, she said, “I know other doctors that have children who want to leave Cuba on a boat, but I won’t do that to Solmari.”