But Perez, a Cuban physician who fled to Colombia from Venezuela last year, faces one final hurdle: U.S. bureaucrats.
That's because Perez and dozens of other Cuban defectors who have fled from Venezuela have been waiting for months for permission from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota to emigrate to the land of their dreams.
"I want to be free," said Perez, 36, who lives in a slum in the Colombian capital with two other Cuban defectors. "But I don't know how long it will take."
Dispatched by Fidel Castro's government for humanitarian work in exchange for oil and other badly needed supplies, a small but growing number of Cuban medical personnel are using their foreign postings as stepping stones to the U.S.
The Bush administration is encouraging the defections. Last year, the Homeland Security Department, which oversees immigration services, modified rules to speed the doctors' requests for political asylum.
Experts say the number of Cuban health workers abandoning clinics in Venezuela and other countries could rise as word spreads of the U.S.program, which began in August. So far, at least 45 Cubans have made their way to Colombia.
"The floodgates will definitely open," said a spokeswoman for Solidarity Without Borders, a Miami-based group that helps Cuban physicians emigrate. "We've had calls from Cubans as far away as Namibia."
About 360 doctors, dentists and physical therapists have applied under the new Cuban Medical Professional Parole program. About 160 have been accepted, while most other cases are pending, said Ana Carbonell, chief of staff for Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a longtime advocate for Cuban exiles……..***
The biggest obstacle to his reforms is “the psychological barrier formed by inertia, the defense of the status quo, the simulation … the indifference or insensibility” of Cuba’s bureaucracy,....
“I warn that all bureaucratic resistance … will be useless,” he declared. “We will be patient and at the same time persevere in the face of the resistance to change, be they conscious or unconscious.”
Castro’s reform plans call for an increase in private enterprise and foreign investments, deep cuts in state subsidies, layoffs for more than 1 million public employees, fewer government controls on state enterprises and expansions in the legal sales of houses and vehicles.
But his words rang hollow to dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who argued that Castro has not seriously tackled a bureaucracy that traditionally derives special benefits from its ability to game the system and the petty corruption prevalent in Cuba.
“He doesn’t want to realize that the bureaucracy has its own mentality, based on its own benefits,” Espinosa said by phone from Havana. “And those benefits have not been destroyed. They remain intact.”........
...During his speech, Castro also announced the government would take several steps to help Cuba’s fledgling micro-enterprises by cutting prices on raw materials and tools and allowing the businesses to obtain bank credits and hire up to five workers without paying extra taxes.
....Castro mentioned the “painful” case of an unidentified government official and Communist Party member who wrote to him to complain that she was almost fired from her job because she had not told her supervisors that she went to church on Sundays…..”