Report: Welfare Fraud Means Hundreds of Millions of U.S. Tax Dollars Going to Cuba Every Year

An increasing number of Cubans are using their refugee status to commit welfare fraud in the United States and take the U.S. tax dollars they receive back to the communist island nation, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

The cost has grown to about $682 million per year in exploitation, according to the newspaper’s analysis of federal and Florida data on federal welfare benefits. But the newspaper believes that is a “conservative” estimate.

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Cubans immigrants coming to America are presumed refugees and thus have legal status. This affords them immediate access to government assistance that includes cash payments, Medicaid, food stamps and job training programs. Since 2003, approximately 329,000 Cuban immigrants came to Florida and were eligible for aid, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Some Cuban immigrants collect their benefits and return to Cuba for months — or never return to the United States — while the checks keep coming. In some cases, the newspaper said, a friend or relative collects the benefit and sends it to the person in Cuba. Federal regulations prohibit welfare recipients from collecting U.S. welfare benefits in another country.

“A family member would come into our office and say another family member isn’t receiving his benefits,” Javier Correoso, aide to former Rep. David Rivera (R-Fla.), told the Sun-Sentinel. “We’d say, ‘Where is he?’ They’d say, ‘He’s in Cuba and isn’t coming back for six months.,’" adding, "They’re taking benefits from the American taxpayer to subsidize their life in another country.”

The investigative report comes as the United States has normalized relations with Cuba, opened an embassy and is seeking greater commerce.

The story mentioned one woman who used the benefits to buy a house in Cuba, a man who returned to Cuba to start a business and another man receiving food stamps who said he was living in Cuba for most of this year.

“They got Medicaid, they got everything, and they returned to Cuba,” Dr. Noel Fernandez, who came to the United States as a refugee two decades ago, told the Sun-Sentinel. “I see people that said they were refugees [from] Cuba and they return the next year.”