By Patrick Markey

BOGOTA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - A group of Cubans say they defected from medical and social cooperation programs in Venezuela by crossing the border to Colombia but are trapped in Bogota after the U.S. government refused them visas.

Speaking in a house in a low-income neighborhood, the Cubans, who said the group included 10 doctors, social workers and sports trainers, had asked for visas under a program aimed at medical professionals but had their applications denied at the U.S. Embassy.

For decades, Havana has sent doctors overseas as part of Fidel Castro's ideological battle with Washington. Cuba has 30,000 doctors and medical staff working in foreign countries, but cases of participants fleeing rarely surface in public.

"Once out, we became deserters from a medical mission and that is a crime in Cuba," Leticia Viamonte told Reuters, saying she and her husband worked in the medical program and left Venezuela 13 months ago.

The group, some of whom arrived late last year from Venezuela, urged U.S. officials to reconsider their applications. One of those who applied is a filmmaker and one who came to Colombia from Guyana.

One of the Cubans showed a letter of rejection from the U.S. government.

"Here we can't work, we have no economic support. We are living off savings and the help family and friends send us," said Viamonte, who left behind a young son in Havana.

Washington, which has enforced an embargo against Cuba since 1962, announced last August that as part of tighter restrictions on Havana it would offer visas to Cuban medical professionals who abandoned their programs overseas.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which handles immigration, said the agency did not comment on individual cases. She said the program allowed Cuban medical professionals to apply for visas, but they still had to pass background and security checks before approval.

The majority of overseas Cuban doctors are in the "Barrio Adentro" -- Inside the Barrio -- project in Venezuela, where Castro's socialist ally, President Hugo Chavez, offered in return 98,000 barrels a day of oil to help bolster the island's economy.

An official at the Venezuelan Embassy in Colombia said officials had no comment on the case and the Cuban Embassy in Bogota did not return calls seeking a statement.

Julio Cesar Alfonso of the Solidarity without Borders advocacy group that helps Cuban defectors, said he had contacted the Bogota group and was pushing lawmakers to assist those in Colombia and others awaiting replies from the U.S. Embassy.

"They are in an immigration limbo ... they can't have a normal life that allows them to look after themselves," Alfonso said from Miami, where he runs the Barrio Afuera -- "Outside the Barrio" -- program for defecting medics.

AlertNet news is provided by