Spain offers 200,000 a get-out-of-Cuba card

[hack89]

Source: MIAMI HERALD

Marisabel, a warehouse clerk in her 40s, wants to leave Cuba and move to Spain. A tattered piece of paper -- her grandmother's Spanish birth certificate -- may allow her to do that.

Marisabel is one of thousands of Cubans who have applied for Spanish passports since Spain enacted a new citizenship law in December. Officially known as the Law of Historic Memory, it grants citizenship to the children and grandchildren of Spaniards who fled the country during the Spanish Civil War or were exiled during the regime of Gen. Francisco Franco.

The Spanish government estimates that more than a million people worldwide will become citizens, including as many as 210,000 Cubans, or 1.9 percent of the population of the island. The Spanish Consulate in Miami is also expecting several thousand applications, mostly from South Floridians of Cuban and Venezuelan descent.

For Cubans still living on the island, the new law offers a legal, safe and not terribly difficult alternative to the way so many have escaped -- spending $10,000 to ride a fast boat across the Florida Straits, or marrying a foreigner.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/v-print/story/904841.html

[IndianaGreen]

1. First of all, it is NOT a get out of Cuba card. Spanish citizenship is available to all

descendants of Spaniards that fled Spain as a result of the Civil War. One has to show that one's grandparents were from Spain and that they fled the violence and persecution that followed the Civil War. I believe that there is a 2-year residency requirement.

Spanish citizenship will also confer EU citizenship.

BTW, Cuban Jews have been emigrating to Israel for years without any backlogs or problems.

Those Cubans wanting to emigrate to US should blame the US government for purposely making it difficult for people to get US visas.

[MADem]

7. Well, if you're in Cuba, of Spanish descent, and can prove that your ancestors skee-daddled at the

appropriate time, and you want to get the fuck out of Cuba, it's most certainly a "Get Out of Cuba" card.

Ironically, many Israeli Jews used their "right of return" to, of all places, Germany not too long ago to gain access to the EU and all those tasty JOBS that were on offer when times were good.


http://www.hadassah.org/news/content/per_hadassah/archive/2007/07_feb/letter_1.asp

The number of israeli children and grandchildren of European Jews obtaining dual citizenships is surging. Experts say it runs into the thousands every year, and it has given rise to a cottage industry of lawyers, translators and brokers who specialize in the various application processes.

The phenomenon is far from unique to Israel. Many people worldwide seek citizenship from more than one country. When the Argentine economy crashed in 2002, the Spanish and Italian embassies in Buenos Aires handled lines of applicants looking for passports from the countries their parents or grandparents had left behind. One beneficiary of the Argentine meltdown was Israel; aliya surged even though, at the time, the Jewish state was in the midst of the intifada.

Of course, it provokes no controversy when Israelis who were born in France or the United States hold on to passports from the lands of their birth. What is striking about the trend in Israel today is that many are asking to become citizens of countries that persecuted, slaughtered and banished their forebears, most notably Germany and Poland. For the families involved, it also often brings up painful and contentious issues....

[bemildred]

2. Anything that remedies the abuses of the Franco regime is to be applauded. nt

[Xipe Totec]

3. Too late for me

Unless they grant citizenship to the descendants of Spanish Muslims and Jews exiled in 1492, I'm out of luck...

:evilgrin:

[IndianaGreen]

4. We still got the keys to those homes!

At least, my great grandfather had a set of strange looking things that he claimed were keys to a house his ancestors owned in Spain before they were forced out.

[Xipe Totec]

6. Do you have a key for the house?

You have to watch this video...

:evilgrin:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH6jgxfWO2Y

[EFerrari]

5. The Miami Herald must make McClatchy wince 20-30 times a day.

[jpak]

8. Breaking: Francisco Franco is still dead

:evilgrin:

[Sultana]

9. They need more cheap labor?

[Lost in CT]

13. Spain has the worst unemployment in the first world.

(Well assuming you allow Spain into the first world)\

I assure you this isn't a cheap labor ploy.

[dipsydoodle]

10. Must've been asleep in Miami

That news is weeks old.

See here for example from 5th Febraury which was after the original announcement discussed elsewhere on DU at the time.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090206/wl_nm/us_cuba_spain_citizenship_1

[Mika]

11. Yep. This was discussed a while ago.

Turns out that more people want to "flee" Miami than Cuba so far. The Spanish consulate in Miami has radio spots on Miamicubano exile radio requesting that exiles get applications online and submit them by mail - their phones and office are OVERWHELMED with people seeking applications and info for their escape.

[dipsydoodle]

14. Do you think

that if a Cuban resident takes up the offer of dual nationality that would give them unimpeded , if there is such a thing , access to the USA using their Spanish passport ? I appreciate that common sense may not apply here. :hi:

[McCamy Taylor]

12. These people are "reds" so Cuba may not seem so bad. But Miami must seem like Hell.

If I had the chance to get free Spanish citizenship, I would go.