Florida Republican looks to clamp down on abuse of Cuban residency rules

He added that Cubans who attain U.S. residency status under the Cuban Adjustment Act are returning to Cuba essentially for tourism purposes, under the guise of needing to visit family members.

{mosads}”Increasingly, Cuban-Americans are citing family reunification to justify travel that in reality more closely resembles common tourism and other unauthorized travel involving everything from plastic surgery to fifteens parties and weddings, to even sex tourism,” he said.

“In many cases, those Cubans traveling are also recipients of U.S. taxpayer-funded welfare programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, public housing and cash assistance,” Rivera added. “In these cases, U.S. taxpayers are actually subsidizing travel to a country that has been designated a sponsor of terrorism by our own government.”

Under the Cuban Adjustment Act, Cubans fleeing from Cuba can get permanent residency status in the U.S. after one year. Rivera’s brief bill would add the following language to current law:

“An alien shall be ineligible for adjustment of status under this section if the alien returns to Cuba after admission or parole into the United States. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall rescind the status of an alien who obtained adjustment of status under this section if the alien returns to Cuba before being admitted to citizenship in accordance with title III of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1401 et seq.), and the alien shall thereafter be subject to all the provisions of such Act to the same extent as if the adjustment of status had not been made.”