Finally, after two years of speculation and pronouncements that came to nothing, the government of President Raúl Castro has enacted a new migration law in hopes of receiving more remittance money from abroad.

The new law replaces a series of abusive and useless migration laws from 1961, 1976 and 1978, along with other regulations and restrictions involving letters of invitation, confiscation of property and the like.

“These measures are truly substantial and profound,” said Col. Lamberto Fraga, Cuba’s No. 2 immigration official, in a Havana press conference following the announcement. “What we are doing is not just cosmetic.”

Reaction from the United States was swift and generally favorable, though cautious.

“For 50 years, Cubans have been prevented from leaving their country by an anachronistic and repressive travel policy that has aptly been compared to a paper version of the Berlin Wall,” said the Los Angeles Times. “The announcement that [Cuba] plans to end this inhumane system was long overdue and more than welcome.”

Roberta Jacobson, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, was enthusiastic yet chose her words carefully when addressing the subject at an Oct. 18 press briefing.

“We don’t yet know how those changes that were announced are going to be implemented,” she said. “It is, of course, of great interest to … policymakers at the State Department and elsewhere throughout the U.S. government what the change means, how it will be implemented, and what we may need to do to respond to that.”

Jacobson, profiled by CubaNews in September, said it’s too early to determine if the U.S. Interests Section in Havana will need additional personnel to handle increases in visa applications.

Under the decree, which was published Oct. 24 and which takes effect Jan. 14, 2013:

* Any Cuban citizen will have access to an ordinary passport and may travel without further restrictions for personal or family reasons, or become a temporary or permanent resident in another country.

* Traveling abroad will depend entirely on the financial status of the person who wishes to travel, as well as the visa requirements and im-migration laws of the receiving countries.

* Permanent migrants and residents abroad may visit Cuba at their discretion for periods of 90 or 180 days (before it was limited to 30 days). This can be extended.
* Cubans traveling for personal or family reasons may reside abroad without interruption for 24 months (before it was 11 months); extensions to be granted if fully substantiated.

*  Cuban citizens classified as permanent migrants may ask to return to Cuba as permanent residents. Relatives will provide for their support if the resident does not have sufficient income and housing (over the last few years, hundreds have been returning every month). Petitions of this type will be answered in less than 90 days.

* Cubans traveling abroad will not lose their homes. In addition, homes and other property may be transferred to other relatives or sold. Those traveling temporarily will continue to collect their social security pensions.

* Any Cuban citizen will be classified as a migrant when he/she remains abroad for more than 24 months without permission or a legal extension.

* Administrative and executive personnel will also have the right to travel on ordinary passports for personal or family reasons prior to approval by their superiors.

* Those who have migrated illegally since 1994, and after eight years have elapsed, may return temporarily. Doctors, health workers technicians and athletes who also left illegally after 1990 — including those who defected while on excursions abroad — will be granted the right to return, with only one exception: those who stayed at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay.

The new law doesn’t apply to everybody, however. Citizens involved in legal cases may not leave, nor may minors without parental authorization — or men who have not fulfilled their military service.

In addition, university graduates necessary for Cuba’s well-being must wait five years while they train their replacements; specialized technicians will have to wait three years.

It’s clear why a revamp of the law was so urgent. Out of a population of 11.2 million, 11% of Cubans have emigrated. This means that one out of every four Cubans has a relative in another country, temporarily or permanently.

Each year, 35,000 to 37,000 Cubans leave the island. And in the past 12 years, 99.4% of those who asked for permission to leave were allowed to; only 0.6% were denied an exit visa.

During this same period, according to government statistics, 941,953 people traveled for personal reasons, and 120,275 of them (12.8%) did not come back. Of those traveling, 156,068 were university graduates, only 10.9% of which did not return.

“Still, the process of obtaining travel permission was onerous and expensive, with an exit permit costing the equivalent of $170 — more than eight times the average monthly state salary,” wrote GlobalPost correspondent Nick Miroff. “And there’s no guarantee that the permit would ultimately be granted by immigration authorities. The exit visa requirement became a hated symbol of the communist government’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy and Orwellian controls on personal freedom.”

Cuba’s new policy has been met with skepticism — even hostility — by many in the South Florida exile community.

Columnist Fabiola Santiago of the Miami Herald says the regime is “vying to unleash another mass exodus” on the United States.

“Providing an escape route to the growing opposition and the discontented has been a superb survival strategy for more than five decades of totalitarian rule,” wrote Santiago, comparing the latest announcement to the Mariel exodus of 1980 and the rafter crisis that ensued 14 years later.

But it may not be enough to keep the troubled Cuban economy afloat.

“You let them go for a couple of years, al-ways under control, and then they come home with a little money,” said former government economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, now a dissident. “Those who do come back, I don’t think they’ll bring much with them.”

University of Havana historian and sociologist Antonio Aja Díaz, an expert on migration issues, said professionals now make up 12% of  Cuba’s outward flow. Remittances sent by Cubans living overseas, mostly in South Florida, now come to nearly $2.3 billion a year, said the Virginia-based Havana Consulting Group.

It’s unclear what effect, if any, Cuba’s new migration policy will have on U.S. laws such as the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which grants preferential visa status to Cuban citizens, or the “wet foot-dry foot” policy — a 1995 revision to the 1966 law which lets any Cuban citizen who manages to make it to U.S. soil to pursue residency in the United States one year later.

The Associated Press says the move has been a public relations boost for the government, giving it another piece of ammunition against critics of its human rights record.

Omar Valino, vice-president of Cuba’s writers’ and artists’ union, told the daily state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde: “It is a transcendental measure that destroys false symbols that have been used against us.”