Skip to main content
Obama ends wet foot/dry foot policy
Immigration rules ‘risked thousands of Cubans lives’

SOLIDARITY campaigners welcomed US President Barack Obama’s ending of the “wet-foot/dry foot” policy which saw Cuban immigrants risk their lives at sea.

The contentious policy, introduced under former president Bill Clinton, stipulated that any migrants intercepted at sea would be sent home, but those who set foot on US soil could remain.

Cuba has long protested that the policy encourages its citizens to risk their lives on the 90-mile sea journey to Florida.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
People sit along the edge of an abandoned swimming pool across from a tanker terminal along the port of Matanzas, Cuba, March 30, 2026
Features / 4 April 2026
4 April 2026

CLAUDIA WEBBE says the US is tightening the noose to destroy Cuban socialism — the need for immediate, international solidarity is urgent

HIGH SPIRITS: During a school activity in a park in Havana on March 4 2026 while a man holds up a photo of Fidel Castro with an ‘in my heart’ message
Latin America / 14 March 2026
14 March 2026

As the US intensifies its economic and political pressure it is now vitally important to demand the British government intervene to end US aggression, writes GEOFF BOTTOMS

Cubans queue for petrol
Latin America / 2 February 2026
2 February 2026

On January 29, US President Donald Trump declared Cuba an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’ to US national security and tightened the blockade against the island nation MANOLO DE LOS SANTOS reports

Two people are shown through the wall of a home damaged by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, October 19, 2005
Features / 30 August 2025
30 August 2025

While ordinary Americans were suffering in the wake of 2005’s deadly hurricane, the Bush administration was more concerned with maintaining its anti-Cuba stance than with saving lives, writes MANOLO DE LOS SANTOS