The wet foot, dry foot policy is the name given to a consequence of the 1995 revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that says, essentially, that anyone who fled Cuba and got into the United States would be allowed to pursue residency a year later. After talks with the Cuban government, the Clinton Administration came to an agreement with Cuba that it would stop admitting people found at sea. Since then, in what has become known as the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, a Cuban caught on the waters between the two nations (i.e., 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 status” and, eventually, US citizenship.
Published in Chapter:
Influence of Afro-Latinas
Copyright: © 2021
|Pages: 23
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-3763-3.ch003
Abstract
For many Afro-Latinos, their journey began in the southeast then moved up to the East Coast and to the rest of the country. Recounting their forced settlement in the Caribbean and the United States may take many years of research, especially when it came to writing every single aspect of their history, ethnic backgrounds, and their locations which have been placed in a hyphenated “box.” Historically, Africans in the United States have struggled with the binary mentality. Now Brown Latinos have joined the group, thus creating a dynamic combination even while voices rise. Food, music, holidays, customs, and spirituality have been carried through the centuries. The influence of Afro-Latinos on gender roles and expectations during the diaspora and an overview of the chronology of Afro-Latinas are divided in this chapter into two sections starting from where their settlement is recorded in the Southeast and following their movement to the Northeast of the United States.