Outcasts and Immigrants

Cuba makes a deal with the U.S. to take back some undesirables

In the demonology of the Reagan Administration, Fidel Castro's Cuba ranks high, probably somewhere between Libya and Nicaragua. The only serious U.S. combat action in a decade has been against Cubans, during last year's Grenada invasion, and the Administration has refused even to consider fullscale, formal diplomatic relations. Thus it seemed a bit out of character when the White House last week announced a deal to re-establish immigration arrangements, the first agreement between the U.S. and Cuba since 1977. Castro will take back as many as 2,746 criminals and mental patients he dispatched to the U.S. along with thousands of other Mariel boat people in 1980. In return, the U.S. will begin accepting once again an orderly stream of Cuban immigrants, as well as about 3,000 anti-Castroites, former political prisoners whose promised exit from Cuba has been held up since the disruptive influx from Mariel.

The image of all 129,000 Marielitos in this country has been unfairly tainted by the drug dealing and savage violence of a comparatively few miscreants. Of the 2,746 who can now be returned to Cuba, about 2,200 have been convicted of crimes in the U.S. and the rest have been in custody ever since they disembarked in Key West, Fla. More than 1,500 are in a federal prison in Atlanta. The rest are in state and local jails and mental institutions. They will be sent back gradually, beginning in January, about 100 being flown out each month as their cases come up in federal court for review.

The 3,000 former political prisoners will get their visas as soon as the U.S. beefs up its staff in Havana to begin processing applications. More than 15,000 other Cubans have applied for regular visas, and in all, more than 20,000 may be permitted to immigrate in 1985. During the 1960s and '70s, an average of about 26,000 Cubans arrived legally in the U.S. each year, reaching a peak of 70,000 during Jimmy Carter's first year in office. Since the 1980 flotilla, fewer than 3,000 Cubans a year have been allowed into the U.S.

When Cuban-American negotiations became a serious possibility last year, Washington was inclined to discuss only the expulsion of the undesirables in U.S. custody. Cuba, however, won assurances that routine immigration procedures would be part of a deal too. The arrangement was worked out by Michael Kozak, a State Department lawyer, and Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, a Cuban Foreign Ministry official, in three rounds of meetings in New York City, the most recent and important one just two weeks ago.

Even as it announced the small diplomatic success, however, the Administration wanted to make sure that nobody gets the wrong idea: Reagan has not gone soft on Cuban Communism. "The conclusion of an agreement on this issue does not signal any change in U.S. policy toward Cuba," declared White House Spokesman Larry Speakes. "We are willing to talk--if Cuba shows signs it is willing to re-enter the family of nations in the Western hemisphere. So far their conduct remains totally unsatisfactory in the eyes of the U.S."