U.S. unable to help noncitizens jailed in Cuba

Madeline Baró Diaz

Permanent residents live and work in this country, pay taxes and in many cases have died while fighting wars for the United States.

Some have been in the United States longer than in their home countries and consider the United States more their home than the place of their birth. Like U.S. citizens, many of them travel abroad with the belief that if they should get in trouble they'll have the U.S. government to back them up.

They're in for a rude awakening, however, if they do run afoul of foreign authorities.

That issue has come to light with the case of María and Arcel Cardoso of Miami-Dade County, who have been detained in Cuba for almost three months on espionage charges. The Cardosos, permanent residents, have lived in the United States for 10 years but the government says it can do little for them because they are Cuban citizens who've been arrested by their own government.

"A permanent resident going to the country of their citizenship has no protection because they are citizens of that country," said immigration attorney Ira Kurzban. "The U.S. embassy rarely gets involved with people who are non-citizen residents of the U.S."

Permanent residents can work in this country, are protected by U.S. and local laws and are required to pay taxes. But they can be deported if they are convicted of certain crimes, are barred from jobs that require citizenship and can't vote in national, state or local elections, except in places that make exceptions.

The plight of permanent residents abroad has made headlines with China's crackdown on dissidents during the past few years, which has ensnared several Chinese-born U.S. citizens and permanent residents while they were visiting their homeland.

While U.S. diplomats have been able to visit some U.S. citizens detained in China, in one of the most celebrated cases, mathematician and economist Yang Jianli, a permanent resident who had been living in Massachusetts, has been held incommunicado in China for more than a year.

It is also not unheard of for permanent residents to be arrested in Cuba. Some have returned to Cuban territory and been charged with crimes related to immigrant smuggling or armed incursions into the island.

U.S. embassies rarely get involved in the cases of noncitizens who run into trouble abroad, Kurzban said.

Embassies are limited even in what they do to help U.S. citizens arrested abroad, and many end up serving prison time, Kurzban said.

"I think it happens all the time in a lot of different ways," Kurzban said.

Cuba is not a country where the U.S. government has much influence in cases involving Americans, said Lisandro Perez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University. The United States has no diplomatic ties with Cuba and only has an Interests Section in Havana.

"My sense would be that [the Cardosos] would be in trouble in Cuba, whether or not they were U.S. citizens," Perez said.

A State Department official based in Havana who did not want to be identified said that if the Cardosos were U.S. citizens, the U.S. Interests Section would have the right to visit them, offer contacts with local lawyers, get information from local authorities about the charges and ascertain that they are in good health. But there's little that can be done for permanent residents.

"Our ability to assist them would be limited even if they were American citizens," the State Department official said.

The Cardosos' relatives find that baffling. The Cardosos have lived in South Florida since 1993 and carved out lives that include a home in a suburban Miami-Dade neighborhood with their children, their Siamese cats and relatives living nearby.

"It's really dumb because she does live here," said María Cardoso's 15-year-old daughter Lizandra Fernandez. "What happened, it could happen to everybody."

Staff Writer Vanessa Bauzá contributed to this report, which was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.

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Source: "South Florida Sun-Sentinel".