Canada avoids blame in high-profile defections

July was not a good month for Cuba on the international sporting front.

We’re not talking about standings. At the recent Pan Am Games in southern Ontario, the Latin American nation came fourth in the medal tally, with 36 golds.

No, Cuba’s challenge was keeping its athletes from deserting their team – and their country.

Four of its rowers and half of its 16-member field hockey team at the Pan Ams reportedly took the opportunity to make a dash to the U.S. border. Even before the games opened July 10, two members of Cuba’s baseball team had already left during a warm-up tournament in North Carolina. And four soccer players jumped ship during the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football’s Gold Cup tournament hosted in various U.S. venues, also in July.

Defections by Cuban athletes during international competitions are not new. Eight members of the Cuban team defected during the 1999 Pan Am Games in Winnipeg, with then President Fidel Castro blasting the Canadian media for egging on would-be defectors.

But as embarrassing as the most recent incidents might be for the island nation, immigration and Cuban-Canadian relations experts say Canada bears no special responsibility towards Cuba to monitor its athletes’ movements or prevent them from seeking asylum, other than to uphold Canada’s own laws and obligations towards keeping any Pan Am competitor safe.

“I don’t think we’re really expected to do anything,” says Lana Wylie, an associate professor of political science who specializes in Canada-Cuban relations at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. “Athletes are allowed freedom … Canada is not going to stop them from defecting.”

Canada’s citizenship and immigration department says it applies its refugee policies consistently regardless of special events. All international athletes coming to the Pan Am Games were screened for the likelihood that they would honour the terms of their visas and leave Canada at the end of their authorized stay, the department said.

Generally in refugee cases, the Safe Third Country agreement between the U.S. and Canada means that those who want to claim refugee status at a land border must do it in the country where they first arrive. If they come to Canada first, they have to go through Canada’s refugee claim process before attempting to proceed to the U.S.

But there’s a special deal for Cubans, which is why Canada should not feel so snubbed that the Cuban athletes didn’t want to stay here either. The Cuban Adjustment Act, in effect in the U.S. since 1966, says any Cuban who touches down on U.S. soil can apply for permanent residence after being in the country for one year and one day. They might spend some of that time in government detention, but their chances of staying are high.

“It’s a super simple process. It’s something that no other nationality has the benefit of in this country so every Cuban has an enormous incentive to come to the United States,” says Sophie Feal, who sometimes works with Cuban refugee claimants as supervising immigration attorney for a special project run by the Erie County Bar Association, based in Buffalo, N.Y.

Cuban refugee claimants have a much harder time being successful in Canada because of loosening international relations and restrictions in their country, which makes the U.S. all the more attractive to them, pointed out another source knowledgeable about Cuba. However, given the size of the Cuban team – at more than 400 athletes -- the source said it’s surprising there weren’t more defections.

 Last year, 114 Cuban refugee claimants were accepted by Canada out of a total of 196, according to numbers supplied by Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board.

Meanwhile the diplomatic warming between the U.S. and Cuba appears to be driving more Cubans to seek refugee status in the U.S. under its current policies because of fear those policies that currently fast-track them to permanent residency will eventually be viewed as unnecessary and cancelled, experts say.

That warming has been helped along by Canada, which hosted secret meetings between the parties prior to U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement last December that the two countries would re-establish diplomatic ties. Actions like that mean Canada has little to worry about when it comes to the impact of the recent Cuban defections, say Canadian Cuba watchers.

“On-the-ground relations are still really solid between Canada and Cuba,” said Wylie from McMaster. “Defections make lots of media headlines but they’re not really the heart and soul of any kind of relationship.”