By Esteban Israel
Reuters
Monday, December 18, 2006 4:30 PM

HAVANA (Reuters) - A Cuban rafter who was sent back to communist Cuba by the United States 11 months ago said Monday he would take to the sea again in a 19th bid to get to Florida if Cuban authorities do not allow him to emigrate legally.

"I want to go legally. I have earned the right," said Emiliano Batista, a 32-year-old unemployed waiter.

"I do not want to push off into the sea again, but if I have to I will," said Batista whose has been intercepted by Cuban and U.S. Coast Guards or frustrated by engine failure on previous attempts to leave Cuba.

Batista managed to make it across 90 miles of perilous Florida Straits waters in January in a makeshift motor boat crowded with would-be emigres dreaming of a better life in the United States.

The 15 migrants, including three small children, were found clinging to an old, disconnected bridge in the Florida Keys on Jan. 5 and repatriated to Cuba by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Under the United States' "wet foot, dry foot" immigration policy toward Cuba, boat people intercepted at sea are usually returned to the Caribbean island, while those who reach U.S. soil are generally allowed to stay.

Since the Cubans landed on a part of the old Seven Mile Bridge, built in the 1930s and now used as a fishing pier, that is no longer connected to land, Coast Guard officials decided they were not on U.S. soil and returned them to Cuba.

The decision sparked controversy among south Florida's Cuban exiles, who sued on the migrants' behalf. A U.S. judge ruled in February that the group had been sent back illegally and the United States agreed to give them visas to emigrate.

But the government of ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro has denied them exit permits.

Seven of the group lost patience and set off again last week in a flimsy vessel. This time they made it across and landed Friday near Bahia Honda State Park in the lower Florida Keys.

Those who stayed behind in Cuba were told by U.S. diplomats on Monday to avoid risking their lives and wait for Cuban permission to leave.

"They say we have to wait and wait. We have been waiting all this time," Noel Reyes, an unemployed restaurant worker, said outside the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

Cuban authorities issued the group passports, but has withheld final permit to leave the country, and it is just a question of time before frustration will lead Batista to build a new boat and attempt the crossing again.

U.S. security officials have said they are preparing for the possibility that Castro's death could spark a massive wave of migration from the island nation.

Twenty-five Cuban men and women came ashore near Longboat Key near Sarasota on Florida's Gulf Coast before dawn Monday, police said. They had left Cuba Friday and had not eaten since Thursday evening.

Cuba blames Washington for encouraging illegal voyages by offering Cubans who make it across automatic residency. The U.S. government says it has tried to foster safe and orderly migration by granting at least 20,000 visas a year under an agreement signed after the 1994 rafter crisis, when more than 35,000 Cubans pushed off in rafts and rubber tires.

Reut16:20 12-18-06