Cuban exile leaders gear up to end wet foot, dry foot policy

[Mika]

Cuban exile leaders gear up to launch another campaign to end wet foot, dry foot policy
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13593449.htm

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart said today he is launching a lobbying campaign to convince the Bush administration to change the ''wet-foot, dry-foot'' rule that is the cornerstone of U.S.-Cuba immigration policy.

With emotions still raw over the Coast Guard's repatriation Monday of 15 Cubans who landed on an old section of the 7-mile bridge in the Florida Keys, Diaz-Balart said he is asking the Bush administration to review the policy.

Diaz-Balart has long wanted ''wet foot, dry foot'' eliminated. But now he is proposing specific changes to the policy to make it more humane -- short of rescinding it. One of the proposals would give ``genuine procedural rights to refugees.''

-

In 2003, Cuban-American lawmakers sent a letter to then-Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega. The letter noted that 63 percent of Cubans who enter the United States and file for asylum have their applications approved. However, of the 7,200 migrants intercepted at sea from May of 1995 through July of 2003, less than 2.5 percent were taken to the Guantanamo Naval Base, having demonstrated a credible fear of persecution.

Diaz Balart seems to want to invite another Mariel event of mass illegal migration to the US which the US's Cuban Adjustment Act will allow any and all Cubans to stay in the US even if they have failed a legal US immigration visa application. (The US offers over 20,000 legal immigration visas per year to Cuba - not all are applied for, and the US interests section in Havana that processes the apps has been sitting on thousands since _Bush took over.)

[pinerow]

1. The Cuban (Miami) mafia is bent on ruining whatever opportunities

may exist for a rational immigration policy...IMO...Cubans who flee the island are economic refugees just like the undocumented workers who enter through our Southern borders...sheesh.

[cantstandbush]

18. And most of the Cubans fleeing are not as bad off as the Mexicans

who cross in desperation.

[Canuckistanian]

2. I don't see why Cubans are treated differently than, say, Haitians

They're all refugees.

[malaise]

16. The difference is

race. Most Haitians are black people.

[Lefty48197]

3. Once they're in US waters, I think they deserve the "dry foot" treatment.

I think US waters start 12 miles off the coast. I don't know why in the hell they act like these people didn't make it into US custody.

[Mika]

4. Cubans are special? Ridiculous.

Cubans are granted special immigration perks that no other immigrant groups is offered.

Immigrants come to the US from all over the world - from democratic countries. They come here for opportunities to earn more money than they could back at home. They come to work so that they can send a little of their earnings back to their relatives. It has little to do with "despotic' regimes, it has more to do with earning power.

Cuba is a special case though, in that it is the US's Helms-Burton law (and a myriad of other sanctions) that are intended to cripple the Cuban economy. This is the stated goal of the US government, as evidenced by the Bush* admin's latest 'crackdown' on family remittances to Cuba.

For Cuban migrants - including illegal immigrants who are smuggled in or have failed a US background check for a legal visa - the US's Cuban Adjustment Act instantly allows any and all Cuban migrants who touch US shore (no matter how) instant entry, instant work visa, instant green card status, instant social security, instant access to welfare, instant access to section 8 assisted housing (with a $41,000 income exemption).

We force economic deprivation on Cubans, then open our doors to any and all Cubans illegal or not, and then offer them a plethora of immigration perks and housing perks not even available to native born Americans.

But yet more immigrants come from Mexico and the Latin Americas than do Cubans, and they have no such "Adjustment Act" like Cubans do. But they still pour in.

Plus, Cuban immigrants can hop on a plane from Miami to Havana and travel right back to the Cuba that they "escaped" from for family trips and vacations - by the hundred of thousands annually until Bush limited their trips to once every 3 years.

[Judi Lynn]

6. One other interesting perk they get, Mika, is food stamps!

It's so much a staple of everyday life for certain elements in the Cuban "exile" population, that Florida State Rudy Garcia's grandmother, herself a happy food stamp consumer got some state employees fired who didn't please here when she went to get her food stamps:

Stalin Would Be Proud
And only Kafka could have dreamed up a character like Rudy Garcia
By Tristram Korten

Published: Thursday, May 1, 2003

The dismissal of six workers from a local office of the Department of Children and Families is one of the most surreal governmental dramas to play itself out in some time. Certainly you recall the incident. On March 4 an aide to state Sen. Rudy Garcia was accompanying the senator's 94-year-old grandmother to the Hialeah DCF office to inquire about her food-stamp eligibility. The aide, Francis Aleman, claims she and Garcia's abuela were treated rudely. She complained to DCF brass in Tallahassee and voilà, everyone up the chain of command got the axe. Garcia happens to sit on two committees that fund and supervise DCF, and the senate is about to vote to confirm DCF Secretary Jerry Regier's permanent appointment.

Two of the fired employees had not even worked at the Hialeah office for one and a half months. They never saw, heard, or talked to the grandmother. The day they were canned they must have felt like characters in a Kafka novel, complete with self-important politicians (and their aides), obsequious bureaucrats, and a labyrinthine system so mindless that once set in motion, it couldn't be stopped.

This is as absurd as it gets. First, what the hell is the grandmother of a state senator doing on food stamps? Much less a senator who in 2001 listed his net worth as $100,212, and his income as $63,829. "She's an American citizen and she wants her independence," Garcia explained to me. "I can't tell her what to do. This is a nominal amount, around $30 a month."

Then the senator, who earns $29,328 as a legislator and derives the rest of his income from a family flooring and tile business in Hialeah, added, "We're not a rich family."
(snip/...)

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2003-05-01/news/korten.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One can only imagine the flood of immigrants we'd be confronting if the U.S. government made these same opportunities a normal part of all their welcome wagon baskets! Just imagine how much so many Asian and Latin American and Caribbean people would appreciate NOT BEING DEPORTED, often to places like Haiti, where their lives are in true peril, and instead, getting instant accomodations, shelter, food, medical care, even financial aid for education, etc., etc. just for showing up. Simply amazing.

[Mika]

8. Cubans are "bribed" with a special form of US socialism - for Cubans only.

That is because Cubans are used to a socialist system, and one of the few ways that the US is made more attractive to them is by offering them extra social programs that not even native born Americans have access to (like a $40,000 income exemption for Sec 8 housing - FYI.. Miami has the greatest # and % of Sec 8 housing in the US).

Then the propagandists say that they are escaping Castro's repression (I guess that Castro doesn't provide enough socialism).

[Judi Lynn]

9. Absolutely appalling. Horrid. So hypocritical, isn't it?

Thanks for confirming something I've suspected for a while.

The fact that Miami can boast the largest number and ratio of Section 8 TAXPAYER SUPPORTED housing has been keep their little secret. That is a SCANDAL, considering the size of the population, and the fact they are treating so many immigrants with inducements they will never extend to people in other countries, no matter how dire, how deadly their circumstances.

[LostinVA]

22. Look at the treatment of Haitian refugees, for example

[MrMonk]

5. I think that they deserve no more consideration than others

who are trying to circumvent immigration procedures.

[Mika]

7. Especially because the US offers Cubans over 20,000 legal visas/year

That is more than any other other country in the world. Not all are even applied for.

[Lost-in-FL]

10. and everybody else to include Haitians, right?

Cause that is not the case.

[Lefty48197]

21. Yes.

.

[FredUptoHere]

24. EVERYONE should get the same treatment- not just the cubans.

it's ridiculous, the power that the 'exile' cuban community in miami has.

[flordehinojos]

11. may the diaz-balarts fall flat and hard on their ass. (may you of weak

stomach pardon my french). the diaz-balarts, along with the bushes and ileana ros-lehtinen, seem to always and forever be able to stand on my last one good nerve.

[Judi Lynn]

12. I never had heard of them until the Elián festival in Little Havana

and started looking for information on them. They are truly prime members of the Obnoxious-American community.


http://diaz-balart.house.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=DataPipes.ViewImage&Image_id=16&ImageStoreType_id=1


Idiots!

[flordehinojos]

13. they are drunk with power . lincoln's uncle and name sake was a senator in

cuba during the batista government. thank you for posting all of these interesting pictures of their kissing up to power and their swimming in a sea of idiocy. you think those are blank pieces of paper bush is holding up for mario's photo-op while jebbie smiles like a rat in that bottom picture? it sure looks like it to me!

[Judi Lynn]

14. Truly! Like what government would REALLY want either one of those

tools ANYWHERE NEAR important gummint business? Probably some torn-out pages from Dubya's comic books. Jeb is probably snickering to himself at the absurdity of the other two pretending they can read.

I have heard Diaz-Balarts come from a formerly very powerful Cuban family. Here's a photo of their aunt Mirta Diaz-Balart with her young husband-to-be, Fidel, long, long ago, (1949) before they ever thought of a divorce.

[flordehinojos]

19. the family was from BANES, ORIENTE, CUBA.

i don't know if they were a powerful family, or if they were made powerful by the uncle's position in the senate. i think that truly powerful people don't go around needing to show-off their power like the diaz-balarts, the bushes, and ros-lehtinen do...because even when they have power, they are not powerful!

fidel castro was a very handsome and charismatic man when he was young.his brother ramon resembles him a great deal. ramon never became a revolutionary. never a politician. i believe he remained a simple country man all of his life. i don't know if he died already, or if he even left cuba like their sister juanita.

that is a very nice picture of fidel castro and mirta diaz-balart. thanks for posting it.

[Mika]

25. Ramon Castro is still alive.

He is a farmer.

A Google image search finds a couple of photos of him..

Here..
http://images.google.com/images?q=Ramon+Castro&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images

[Judi Lynn]

26. Thanks for the look at the brother. I'd never heard of him until

a few minutes ago when I read yours and flordehinojos's remarks.

I have read that the plantation which belonged to Fidel Castro's father was the first one to be contributed to the new Cuba, and that it has a marker now indicating who used to live there, and that it was put into use a long time ago.

[Mika]

27. He's a cattle farmer

He's with some of the cattle/dairy trade associations that meet with US trade reps seeking to sell cattle to Cuban farms. I remember seeing a couple of pictures of Fidel and Ramon together at one of these meetings, looking at some bulls and dairy cows. The US dairy farmers were pleasantly surprised at the level of farming knowledge that President Castro has, including the hardships facing small independent US dairy farmers. Ramon is Fidel's older brother.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Cuban-Americans Lash Out at Republicans

Cuban-Americans Lash Out at Republicans

By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ
The Associated Press
Wednesday, January 11, 2006; 3:56 AM

MIAMI -- When 15 Cubans fleeing their homeland landed on an abandoned bridge in the Florida Keys, they inadvertently found themselves in an uncomfortable legal spotlight _ one the Republican Party is sharing.

The plight of the immigrants _ deported Monday back to Cuba _ has reopened the bitter debate over the government's immigration policy and angered South Florida's heavily Republican Cuban exile community.



Ramon Saul Sanchez, president of the Democracy Movement, center, continues his hunger strike Monday, Jan. 9, 2006, in Miami. Sanchez is protesting the return to Cuba of 15 Cubans who fled their homeland and landed on an abandoned bridge piling in the Florida Keys. Sanchez said he began the hunger strike on Saturday. In the background are Aracelys Hernadez, left, and Mercedes Hernadez, right, both relatives of the returned Cubans. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz) (Alan Diaz - AP)
"This will have an effect of reducing the numbers of Cuban-American voters that would blindly follow a Republican candidate," Cuban American National Foundation President Pepe Hernandez said. "Cubans are going to realize that both parties come when they need us but tend to forget our pledges when they don't."
(snip)

The issue has become more thorny for Republicans as the party grows increasingly split over immigration, said Damian Fernandez, head of Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute in Miami.

"I think that at some point, the dissonance between rhetoric and practice will have some sort of result, whether it's a reformulation of the policy or a political fallout _ with people's allegiance to the Republican party eroded," Fernandez said.
(snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/11/AR2006011100202.html



Always searching for face time, Ramon Saul Sanchez also made a point of haunting the Elián Gonzalez's relatives' home, and did his very best drama queen work, pretending he had been brutalized after the federal agents came to collect the little boy the uncle refused to surrender after the court order. At some point later, he stretched out on the ground with his head swaddled like a Q-tip, lying in a woman's lap, seeking sympathy and camera time.

At no time during his terrifying ordeal was he unable to give interviews.

http://www.vkblaw.com/elian/elian17.art

Walk down memory lane, do you remember this engaging young lady?



http://www.vkblaw.com/elian/elian17.art

Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of The Democracy Movement, holds back a fellow supporter

http://www.vkblaw.com/elian/elian18.art

Ramon Saul Sanchez, is helped by supporters. Sanchez, who was bleeding from one ear, said he was knocked out by an agent using a rifle as a club.
Wilfredo Lee/AP

The Sanchez Solution
Ramon Saul Sanchez is an exile leader with charisma, style, and a strong sense of drama
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2000-04-13/feature.html

[Mika]

17. Ramon Saul Sanchez served jail time for a stabbing in a bar fight.

He stabbed someone in a Miami bar fight over who was more anti Castro. Raul es mas macho.


He was also involved in the Letellier/Moffit/UN car bombing case, among many other violent terrorist acts - in the US as well as in other countries.


-Spies in Miami, Commandos in Cuba-
-If you disagree with what they do, why defend their right to do it?-
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/2001-07-05/metro.html

Sanchez went to prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating the 1979 U.N. bombing case.

He is a staunch supporter of terrorist Luis Posada and has been fundraising for Posada's defense.

[Judi Lynn]

20. Mika, thanks for posting that link.Surprised to see Santiago Alvarez named

in it, maybe not! Funny to see him mentioned in that 2001 article, after recently hearing he was arrested for having been found with that horrendous arms cache in his home, and office.

The photo of the "exile" commandoes shooting at Cuba was the first one I've ever seen, after reading about their attacks on the Cubans for ages. So much for the U.S. law about not conducting terrorism on another country using this one as a base.



It does seem that they will simply all have to die off of old age before South Florida will ever stop terrorizing Cuba. That's really sad, isn't it? Hopefully _Bush won't still be in office, and the U.S. won't have annexed Cuba and turned it into a theme park or a trash dump by then.

[Mika]

23. Some of the radical exiles are training their children.

Perhaps you remember this article on Cuban exile terrorist group Alpha 66, who are still training for, and committing, armed incursions into Cuba.

They are training CHILDREN to continue for at least another generation.

I suppose that the author of this story could be arrested for spying on Cuban exile groups like Alpha 66, like the Miami couple who were recently busted for doing so, because the Cuban gov could read this story on-line like the rest of us.

Interesting that the US gov busts people watching Cuban exile groups who openly train for terrorist ops BUT they do not bust the groups doing the training for such terra ops, isn't it?



Alpha Males
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1998-08-27/news/feature.html

Hustling down a dirt road surrounded by miles of farmland, Leslie Fernandez struggles to keep a rifle balanced on her shoulder. Dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a white T-shirt, she catches up with her fellow commandos -- five men dressed in military fatigues and also toting weapons.

"What kind of gun is this?" she asks Jesus Hoyos, who is leading the team.
"That's an M-1," Hoyos explains curtly. He's cradling a semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15.

The group stops and huddles. "This is the rally point," Hoyos tells them. He reviews the plan: Leslie will remain behind to guard the backpacks under cover of darkness while the men sneak into a Cuban military base and shoot at two MiGs parked in a large grassy field. "Let's go," Hoyos says quietly.

Leslie watches the men creep down the edge of the road -- two in front, three behind -- then disappear through an open metal gate surrounding a small military camp. Moments later machine guns pop. They pop again, faster. "Retreat! Retreat!" Hoyos shouts. The commandos pull back, turning and firing as they go. They scurry down the road and regroup, breathless, at the rally point, where Leslie has been patiently waiting. "Okay, enemy troops have the beach blocked," Hoyos pants. "Contingency plan A -- the helicopter -- was shot down. So we have to walk five miles to a point where they're going to pick us up at 0600."

But there are no enemy soldiers, no MiGs in the field. Only stacks of old tires. The bullets are blanks. It is not night, but Sunday morning. And Leslie is no companera; she's an eleven-year-old who has never been to Cuba and scarcely speaks Spanish.