Thread: Wet or dry, policy should be the same

Wet or dry, policy should be the same
Posted on Sun, Aug. 10, 2008reprint print email
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BY MYRIAM MARQUEZ
mmarquez@MiamiHerald.com

For decades we watched them arrive, wet, tired, dehydrated, some barely alive.

They sacrificed everything to take to the sea on rickety boats or rafts like the one my cousin built to get here in the 1990s. Desperate, they even grabbed inner tubes like another one of my cousins used to get to freedom in 1966.

Now it's all about those Cubans fortunate to have U.S. families who break the law and pay smugglers 10 thousand bucks a head to bring them here.

After this country extends them every privilege under the Cuban Adjustment Act, some of them abuse the law. They pop up in Medicare scams and, when the FBI comes after them, they take the next plane back to Cuba or hitch a ride on a smuggling boat headed to the communist island.

As Miami Herald reporter Jay Weaver's excellent Medicare Racket series exposed, at least half of South Florida's Medicare fugitives are believed to be back in Cuba. Most of those scammers arrived in the mid 1990s. Some became U.S. citizens, then set out to bilk U.S. taxpayers of millions of dollars in false Medicare bills.

We don't know if these fugitives arrived legally with a visa or in smuggling operations. But their lawbreaking puts the Cuban Adjustment Act in jeopardy.

FLIGHT RISKS

U.S. District Judge Federico Moreno, who has handled several Medicare scam cases involving Cuban defendants, is right to warn his colleagues about the flight risks.

''It seems to me that our thinking has to change,'' Moreno noted during a June hearing when he learned that Carmen Gonzalez, charged in an $11 million scam, had left for Cuba. ``We always think here in Miami that if you're a Cuban refugee, you're not going to go back to Cuba.

``I'm wondering whether a Jew leaving Nazi Germany can go back and forth to visit the relatives. I would suspect you couldn't.''

It hurts to see this abuse of U.S. laws, particularly when there are good reasons to grant asylum to Cubans who are true political refugees.

With Fidel Castro dying and his brother Raúl cracking down on civil society groups, U.S. policy on Cuba is at a crossroads.

If we want to put pressure on the regime, then let's drop wet foot/dry foot. The 1995 immigration accord between the Clinton Administration and Cuba all but invited human smuggling.

EQUAL FOOTING

It's an arbitrary policy that's applied haphazardly. A Cuban can dry foot on low tide but would end up wet foot at high tide.

Those caught at sea get sent back to Cuba or, if they make a case for asylum, get sent to Guantánamo, forced to wait for months, sometimes years, for a third country to take them. But any Yosmany or Yusmila smuggled into the U.S. gets to stay without having to show cause.

It's an abuse of America's good will.

The adjustment act should apply to those who qualify under the 20,000 annual visa and family-unification system. Since November, U.S. immigration officials have been expediting parole visas in an attempt to stop the growing number of migrants at sea.

Sure, smuggling will continue -- whether from Cuba or Haiti or anywhere people face calamity. But it will taper down if the U.S. applies wet-foot rules to dry-footers.

The abuses have gone on for too long. Once Cubans know that they'll be forced to live in the shadows if they are smuggled in, then their U.S. families will stop risking lives and flouting U.S. laws by paying smugglers.

U.S. benevolence has its limits.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-d ... 35724.html

Even the older Cubans are fed-up with Cuban criminals and yes it is time to end the wet foot dry foot but with the political power of Cubans in Florida I don't see it happening.

The abuses have gone on for too long. Once Cubans know that they'll be forced to live in the shadows if they are smuggled in, then their U.S. families will stop risking lives and flouting U.S. laws by paying smugglers.

And when do any of these illeal aliens live in the shadows? When ICE is raiding a place is about to, is the only time.

MSM needs a new catch slogan I am tired of the "live in shadow" slogan.

I think it will change. The older Cubans immigrants are fed up with the oones coming now and the ones who came on the Mariel Boat Lift that are criminals here. If you read the comments people are writing after an article about Cubans making land you will see how fed up people are. Lately there have been many Cubans who were caught committing medical fraud. If I recall correctly 36 out 38 charged were Cuban and the majority of them stole over $100,000 and took off to Cuba. Then you have smugglers being caught, people being caught involved in marriage for green card scams, committing mortgage fraud, and other types of scams and the majority of those are Cuban. They have to do something as people are really looking bad at them.

You mean, we really aren't the world's ATM to be pillaged at will by outsiders? </end dry ironic sarcastic humor>

5 pages of comments have been left at the article:
http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.a ... kr-miamitm

The comments get going but I am amazed how tame they are this time. When you see the ones people write when Cubans make land you can really see people's outrage with it.

If you think that some of the Cubans are feed up with the criminal Cubans you should see the non-Cubans in south Florida. Not many people left in south Florida who have English as their first language.
All of my relatives who lived in south Florida since back in the 1950's have move elsewhere.

JohnDoe2: You are somewhat correct. Many people have and are moving out of both Miami Dade and Broward Counties. Between the hurricanes driving insurance costs through the roof, increase in crime, illegals and non English speakers people are fed up.

We don't know if these fugitives arrived legally with a visa or in smuggling operations. But their lawbreaking puts the Cuban Adjustment Act in jeopardy.

Squash the Cuban-Adjustment Act. Enough already. It is an unfair privilege and should stop. Its unfair to other people around the world who want to come here legally, and its unfair to America's taxpayers who end up supporting them.