HIALEAH: Two Cuban actors who defected last week en route to the Tribeca Film Festival in New York are plotting a new life together in America and hope to pursue their acting careers.
"We'd love to go to Las Vegas, it's always caught my attention," Javier Nunez Florian told AFP in an interview alongside girlfriend Anailin de la Rua after emerging in Miami, days after their dramatic disappearance.
Immigration attorney Wilfredo Allen told AFP the couple will apply for political asylum in the United States within 10 days, and that they had a "very high chance" of getting their request approved.
"With our papers in hand, we hope to find whatever work is out there. If it's in acting, great, but really I will do any work in order to get settled here," De La Rua said.
"So far, we've liked everything" about life in America, added Nunez.
"I like the way people live in Miami without having really lived there. Now we have to fight for our dream and if it turns out that we can head out to Las Vegas, that would be welcome."
While they await the necessary paperwork to being their new lives, the couple was sequestered in a hotel room in Hialeah, a city northwest of Miami that has a large number of Cuban expatriates.
"Then, we do not know where to go," De la Rua admitted.
The couple, both 20 years old, said they would likely stay in Miami to start with as they have friends and family there in the Cuban community. Back home, they said, they have "no future."
The young lovers kept their plans secret even to their co-star Dariel Arrechaga in the Cuban film "One Night," which tells the story of three teenagers making the dangerous ocean passage from Cuba to Florida in a homemade raft -- a plot that drew comparisons with the decision the two actors later made.
The couple apologized to the movie's co-star and its director for failing to show up at the New York film festival.
The pair slipped away from their entourage during the flight's stopover in Miami last Wednesday.
They told AFP that they spoke to Arrechaga and director Lucy Mulloy on Saturday and apologized for having fled without warning instead of taking the connecting flight to New York.
"They said they understood and wished us luck," De la Rua said.
Arrechaga went on to the film festival to pick up an acting award he was to share with Nunez.
Cuban nationals coming to the United States can legalize their status in the country through the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows petitioners to get "green cards" after they had been physically present in the United States for at least one year.
Since 1966, Cubans have been granted automatic residence if they make it to the United States from the communist-ruled island, and thousands attempt the voyage every year, often navigating shark-infested waters in rickety boats.
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