BACK	CUBA: Exiles Come Home for Christmas in Droves

Director of the Foreign Ministry department for Cubans Resident Abroad, Jose Cabanas, said the size of the number was ''a clear display of the relation established between the nation and the emigrants.''

''These 15,000 people must sign a sworn statement before leaving the United States stating they have not travelled to the island in the last 12 months,'' he said.

The regulations on the US economic blockade on Cuba states visitors must travel through a third country, normally Mexico or the Bahamas, and are only allowed to spend 100 dollars per day.

Nonetheless, an ever increasing number of people travel to the island two or three times a year to visit their close relatives, often leaving them a good supply of dollars.

Cabanas played down reports on large remittances sent to some Cubans by their relatives living abroad. ''The figures are not as high as some of the press have made out,'' he said.

Sources outside Cuba stated some 800 million dollars of remittances entered the island in 1996, but local experts state the real figure is nearer to 500 million.

''Cuba does not restrict remittances nor does it charge taxes on them as happens in other countries,'' said Cabanas, adding ''it it difficult to imagine what argument the US authorities use to ban this type of family help.''

The fact that all Cuban born people maintain their citizenshp under the law and must travel to the country on a Cuban passport, makes it easy for US resident nationals to travel between the two countries as they are generally legal in both.

''Noone now thinks those who left the country are maggots. The times of intolerance towards the people who chose to emigrate appear to have gone for ever,'' Dagmara Fernandez, a 39 year-old civil engineer told IPS.

Fernandez had travelled 400 kilometers to the Jose Marti International Airport in Havana to meet her brother, flying in from Miami where he has lived for four years.

''My brother came last year, he is coming this year and plans to come next year aswell. But when my grandfather went in 1963 something like 15 years passed before his children saw him again,'' said Fernandez, adding that at that time ''even writing letters to relatives in the United States was practically a crime.''

Family separations were some of the most serious consequences of the rigid political line taken on the Cuban migratory process for decades.

Everyone who chose to live abroad was considered ''an enemy'' by the island authorities.

At the same time, the Cuban migratory phenomenon and family relations were affected by the Cuba-United States situation and the action of exile organisations openly opposed to the Fidel Castro government.

The first meeting between the Fidel Castro government and a groups of emigrees occurred on Dec. 22, 1977, a forerunner to the dialogue opened in 1978, which allowed Cuban emigrees to travel back to the country for the first time.

But the process was paralysed with the mass exodus of Cubans to the United States in 1980, and was not started up again until 1994 when the Cuban government called the first ''Nation and Emigration'' conference.

''Today we are working for this process to be irreversible, although we do not have the full co-operation of the (US) authorities,'' said Cabanas.

It is thought more than two million people born in Cuba live in other countries, and more than a million of these are in the United States.

Cabanas stated the facilities offered for family reunions by the island authorities in recent years include the offer of a migratory document which gives ''emigrants complete liberty to visit their homeland.''

The official said the number of people applying for this document has doubled this year, although, apparently, the number of permits granted is still low. (END/IPS/tra-so/da/mj/sm/97)