Costa Rica to Send 1st Flight of Cuban Migrants to El Salvador

The first flight for Cuban migrants stranded in Costa Rica will take off on Tuesday as part of the region-wide Central American plan to remedy the migrant crisis, Costa Rican officials announced on Wednesday.

The scheduled flight will take 180 Cuban migrants to El Salvador, from where they will continue by ground transportation through Guatemala to the Mexican border, Costa Rican Foreign Minister Manuel Gonzalez explained. Mexico will then issue migrants 20-day transit visas to find and pay for their own transportation to the U.S. border.

But the first flight, which will prioritize transporting families with children, will only be a very small preliminary step in transporting the estimated 8,000 Cuban migrants currently stranded in Costa Rica.

180 Migrantes cubanos saldrán el 12 de enero vía aérea a El Salvador, anunció OIM y cancillería de Costa Rica pic.twitter.com/GxXRLobypH

— Fernando Francia (@FFranciateleSUR) January 6, 2016

“180 Cuban migrants will leave Jan. 12 by air to El Salvador, announced the IOM and Costa Rica’s foreign minister.”

According to Gonzalez, further flights will depend on the success of the first trip on Tuesday evening.

The cost of the flight from Costa Rica to El Salvador will be US$535 per person, which the migrants are expected to cover. A commercial flight from San Jose, Costa Rica to San Salvador on Avianca on Tuesday would cost about US$350, according to the airline’s website.

The news comes as another group of almost 1,000 Cubans migrants stranded in Panama called on Central American governments on Wednesday to let them pass through toward the U.S., saying they are “desperate” in the face of “uncertainty” and the lack of information they have received about next steps they can take.

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Guatemalan and Salvadoran officials also met on Wednesday to coordinate the ground transportation for Cuban migrants once they arrive in El Salvador.

The Cuban migrant crisis in Central America started to heat up in November, when Nicaragua closed its border to migrants, leaving thousands stranded at the border. In December, Costa Rica stopped issuing transit visas to Cubans, worsening the precarious situation of migrant limbo.

Familias de #inmigrantes cubanos con niños tendrán prioridad para salir de #CostaRica https://t.co/sR7GaeK9am pic.twitter.com/z0jFJmWFXz

— Univision Noticias (@UniNoticias) January 5, 2016

“Cuban migrant families with children will have priority to leave Costa Rica.”

At the end of December, the governments of Panama, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Mexico met to discuss to a regional cooperation plan to put an end to the growing humanitarian crisis.

Cuba has blamed the crisis on U.S. Cold War-era immigration policy put in place during the early years of the United States blockade on Cuba. Under the U.S.’ 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, any Cuban who enters the United States is able to gain permanent residency after being present in the country for one year. The act, amended in 1995 to not admit to the U.S. any Cubans found at sea, became known as the “wet-foot, dry-foot” rule.

Many Cubans expect that the renewal of U.S.-Cuban relations could bring an end to a decades-old policy allowing landed Cuban migrants to stay in the United States.

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