Liberal Forum

U.S. ending 'wet foot, dry foot' policy for Cubans

President Barack Obama is ending the longstanding "wet foot, dry foot" policy that allows Cubans who arrive in the United States without a visa to become permanent residents, the administration announced Thursday.

The move, which wasn't previously outlined and is likely one of the final foreign policy decisions of Obama's term, terminates a decades-long policy that many argued amounted to preferential treatment for a single group of migrants.
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The policy, in place for more than two decades, had applied solely to Cubans.

Following a mass exodus of Cubans to the United States, former President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s changed the "open door" policy on Cuban refugees -- first established by President Lyndon B. Johnson -- to the "wet, foot, dry foot" policy that repatriated Cubans intercepted at sea but allowed those who reach land to stay.