By Michael Martinez
Tribune correspondent

HAVANA — The number of fleeing Cubans caught at sea reached a 17-year high last year—2,868 in all— despite a 1994 migration accord between Cuba and the U.S. designed to reduce immigration, according to U.S. officials and government statistics.

At the same time, Cubans are making Mexico the more popular route to enter the United States, arriving at a rate of 10,000 a year, compared with a total of 7,693 Cubans who chose to go through the Florida Straits last year, U.S. diplomats in Havana said Monday. Some of those Cubans made it to the U.S.

Those figures were released by American officials as they intensified their complaints that Cuba won't allow them to fill 11 job openings in Havana, resulting in not enough workers to issue visas to Cubans. The number of visas fell 5,000 short of a 20,000 goal in the fiscal year ended last weekend. It marked the first time that Americans failed to meet that goal since 1994.

But officials in the U.S. diplomatic mission avoided connecting the increase in illicit journeys to the reduction in visas.

"I imagine that perhaps it's been due to the good weather," said consul general Sean Murphy. He also said "a lack of hope" prompted Cubans to try to leave the communist country.

When told of last year's official drop in U.S. visas, one Cuban laborer seeking to leave the island said that average Cubans pay the price for the political problems between the two countries.

"It's a little sad, but people still hope with a lot of patience about going to the United States," said Pedro, 28, a house painter who went to the U.S. Interests Section this summer to apply for political refugee status for his wife and other relatives. He would not give his last name out of fear of reprisal.

Washington and Havana have been trying to provide a safe, orderly way for Cubans to leave the island since 1994, when a startling 40,000 immigrants from Cuba were intercepted at sea. That's when the U.S. government agreed to admit a minimum of 20,000 Cubans annually, not including the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens.

The availability of such visas hasn't stopped Cubans in recent years from taking fast boats or rafts across the sea to reach Florida. In fact, U.S. Coast Guard interdictions have steadily grown from 666 in 2002 to 2,712 in 2005, according to a Congressional Research Service report last year.

Last year's 2,868 interceptions of mostly fast boats was the highest number since 1995, according to officials and statistics.

Cuban officials this summer charged U.S. officials with lying and violating the migration accords in an effort to cause "instability" on the island.