Why the Cuban Adjustment Act needs to be fully restored

 A closer look at the wet foot, dry foot policy

Cuban Patrol Boat near Guantanamo Naval Base

On December 16, 2014, the eve of the announcement of a new relationship between the United States and the Castro regime, Cuban Patrol Boat sank a boatload of 32 Cuban refugees and one of them Diosbel Díaz Bioto went missing and is assumed drowned the others were detained. 

Diosbel Díaz Bioto: Died December 16, 2014

Four months later Yuriniesky Martínez Reina was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. A group of young men were building a boat near Menéndez beach to flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and were shot at by state security.  If they had made it to dry land they would be free, but if caught at sea the U.S. coastguard then would have returned them to the Castro dictatorship. This is a violation of the spirit of the Cuban Adjustment Act, a 1966 law that granted refugee status to those fleeing Cuba from 1966 until 1994.

 

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina  killed April 9, 2015

At the same time many Cuban athletes continue to defect to the United States. This is something Mexican, Jamaican, or Dominican athletes do not have to do because they are free to enter and exit their own countries. Additionally their governments do not limit their right to live and work abroad. In the case of Mexico some Americans are upset because the Mexican government provides aid and assistance to Mexican migrants in the United States.  Cuba is the only country in this hemisphere, although Venezuela is trending in the same direction, in which the regime does not recognize the rights of Cuban nationals to enter and exit their own country. Cuba is different from the rest of the countries in the hemisphere.

Meanwhile there is also an additional security concern. Author and journalist Fabiola Santiago brought up the concerns of exiled opposition activist Yoan David Gonzalez in her August 12, 2015 column "Pro-Castro there, but now here?" on Cuban repressor Jenny Freire Rosabal who engaged in acts of repudiation in Cuba and rallied for Chavez in Venezuela who is now living here in Miami with her husband who is slandering democratic opposition activists from the island.

Unfortunately, these are not new problems but the result of the Clinton administration's immigration accord with the Castro regime in 1995 that violated the spirit of the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act deporting Cuban refugees back to the Castro regime. Carl McGill, Professor of Criminal Justice at University of Phoenix in 2000 compared "Clinton's policy to return 'rafters' to Cuba" was "like returning a slave in pre-Civil War America back to his enslaver. This would have condoned civil rights violations and slavery, as returning a 'rafter' to Cuba condones human rights violations and communism." The Dred Scott Decision is a historical abomination as is President Clinton's wet foot, dry foot policy that circumvented the intent of the Cuban Adjustment Act.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that "for over 30 years, fleeing Cubans had been welcomed to the United States; however, the U.S. government reversed this policy on August 19, 1994, when President Clinton announced that Cuban rafters interdicted at sea would no longer be brought to the United States." Wet foot, dry foot" was a massive set back for Cuban refugees.

At the same time the 1995 agreement called on the Castro regime to register Cubans for a lottery and up to 20,000 "immigrants" would be eligible to enter the United States annually. This is what has led to the South Florida being filled with regime repressors and who knows how many spies. Rosabel is not the first to be called out. 

In November 2012 The Miami Herald reported on former Cuban provincial prisons chief Crescencio Marino Rivero who abused prisoners and ordered guards to abuse others before he moved to Miami. 

Cresencio Marino Rivero, Cuban prison chief found in Miami

This is in spite of the August 4, 2011 Obama Administration ban on visas for people who the State Department finds have been involved in human rights violations. Cuban human rights violators continue to get a free pass to enter the United States and when identified by their victims, nothing happens. 

The 1995 Clinton - Castro Immigration Accord needs to be repealed and the lottery controlled by the dictatorship ended and the Cuban Adjustment Act restored to its original intent. Otherwise the legacy of the Obama years will not be tearing down the Cuban version of the Berlin Wall which are the Florida Straits but by ending the Cuban Adjustment act closing off the path to freedom for those fleeing the dictatorship and assisting the brutal agents of the Castro regime in the murder of refugees and enslavement of Cubans.

The Secret of the Powerful Cuban Exile Lobby in Washington D.C.

What Cuban exiles and Cuban Americans don't like to admit

The dictatorship in Cuba has now been in power for 55 years and for most of that time economic sanctions have been in place.

What is known as the Cuban Embargo began On January 3, 1961 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower suspended trade with Cuba, a few days after his administration broke diplomatic relations with the country. The embargo on Cuba since its inception has meant restrictions on trade and travel to the island by U.S. citizens and in practice has been a partial embargo. Over the decades these sanctions have been loosened and tightened depending on the circumstances at the time.

There was no Cuban exile or Cuban-American lobby until the 1980s and the lobby’s greatest effort involved seeing that Cubans on the island be provided with uncensored news in what would become known as Radio/TV Marti. At the time Radio Free Europe/Radio had been broadcasting to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union since 1950 but not to Cuba or China. Radio Marti was established in 1983 (TV Marti in 1990) and Radio Free Asia in 1996.

The ban on U.S. imports from Cuba remains but U.S. exports to Cuba have been going on since 1992 with the amounts dramatically increasing since 2002 reaching its peak in exports to Cuba under the Bush Administration in 2008.

President Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in September of 2000 and a month later signed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act and opened cash and carry trade with the Castro dictatorship at the end of his Administration. At the time of its passage, Fidel Castro said "his country would not buy 'even a grain of rice' under the current terms."

The Cuban dictator ended up buying much more than a grain of rice under those terms. Between 2000 and 2013 American companies have sold $4.689 billion dollars in goods to the Castro regime on a cash and carry basis. Despite the 2003 crackdown on dissidents known as the Black Cuban Spring where the Bush Administration tightened sanctions on being able to travel to Cuba and set limits lower on remittances sent to the island. However, nothing was changed in the cash and carry sales made by U.S. companies to the Castro regime. Towards the end of the Bush Administration in August of 2008 the Cuban government announced that the United States was its fifth leading trading partner.

Despite loosening restrictions further under the Obama Administration agricultural trade with Cuba had dropped to 363.3 million dollars in 2011 and figures for 2012 showed a improvement with sales to the island at 457.3 million dollars. In 2013 agricultural trade dipped to 348,747,293.00 but at the same time there was a dramatic increase in the purchase of pharmaceuticals from 234,718.00 dollars in 2012 to 2,184,370.00 in 2013. However, it did not make up for the decline in Agricultural sales to Cuba. This is not a total embargo but a partial one in which the United States is one of Cuba’s top trading partners. As of the reporting year of 2013 total trade with Cuba since 2001 under TSRA amounts to $4,689,621,948.00

Meanwhile countries that do not have sanctions in place, which includes restrictions on granting credits such as Russia, Venezuela, China, Japan, Spain, Argentina, France, Romania, Brazil, Italy, and Mexico are owed billions of dollars. Russia is forgiving $29 billion dollars of debt that the Castro regime owed it and Mexico is waiving 487 million dollars of debt owed by the regime in Havana.

Where do you think the United States would be on this list if sanctions were lifted and credits became available to the Castro regime? How much would U.S. taxpayers have to shell out?
 
When the Pro-Castro lobby and their allies in the Chamber of Commerce that are very powerful try to sell normalizing relations with Castro the facts always get in the way. For partial example read on:

• On July 15, 2013 Panama captured a North Korean flagged ship from Cuba smuggling arms provided by the Cuban government in violation of international sanctions. The weapons were hidden under bags of sugar. A total of 25 standard shipping containers (16 forty – foot and 9 twenty foot) and 6 trailers were found for a total of about 240 tons of arms and related material among which were found: 1. Surface to air missile systems 2. Radar systems 3.Two Cuban MiG fighters
• As mentioned earlier Cuba is a bad credit risk and the dictatorship oversees a population of 11 million souls trapped in a highly centralized communist economy. Foreigners doing big business in Cuba can only do business with the Cuban dictatorship. Even the hiring of employees is controlled by a government agency that also receives their paycheck. Businessmen are regularly jailed for years as a tactic to avoid having to pay them and to expropriate them.
• Arresting and holding hostage since December 2009 Alan Gross, an American citizen because he was trying to provide uncensored internet access to the local Jewish community in Cuba.
• Extrajudicially executing U.S. citizens over international airspace on February 24, 1996 which was the reason for the tightening and codification of sanctions in the Helms-Burton Bill.
• The Castro dictatorship engaging in and supporting international terrorism over the past five decades which is the reason that Cuba is on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. 

The secret that the Chamber of Commerce and the Pro-Castro lobby do not want you to know is that there is no powerful Cuban exile lobby. There is a David and Goliath battle going on but when it comes to money the anti-Castro Cuban exiles are David in a battle with Goliath's such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A question to ask yourselves is how can three Cuban American U.S. Senators out of 100 and four Cuban American congresspersons out of 435 dictate Cuba policy? The answer is they can’t. What has shaped the current U.S. policy boils down to the facts in evidence and what serves the best interests of the United States.What these legislators and free Cubans are doing is helping to get the facts out in the midst of the onslaught of pro-Castro and corporate propaganda.

Commitment to Freedom

This document was first published today in Capitol Hill Cubans and favorably cited in The Foundry by the Heritage Foundation's Latin America expert Ray Walser:

Prominent Cuban Exile Corporate Leaders Warn of Castro’s “Cosmetic Reforms” 


Over a dozen former Fortune 500 senior executives and other multinational business leaders urge support for the Cuban pro-democracy movement and reaffirm their commitment to help the economic reconstruction of a free Cuba.


Washington, D.C. - Prominent Cuban exile business and corporate leaders released today a document entitled “Commitment to Freedom”, rejecting business ties with Cuba while the island remains under totalitarian rule. However, they are committed to helping in the reconstruction of their homeland when freedom dawns.


The signatories are former senior executives from Dow Chemical, General Mills, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Colgate-Palmolive, Bacardi, American Express Bank, PepsiCo, Warner Communications, Reynolds Metals, Continental Bank International, Martin Marietta Aluminum, Amex Nickel Corporation, as well as the head of Jazztel and other distinguished business leaders. 


The signees of the document warn against the Castro regime’s deceptive campaign to secure U.S. capital infusion and bank credits, and lure some Cuban-American businessmen, without ushering in a true economic and political opening. The reforms introduced so far are mostly cosmetic, heavily-taxed and revocable, and offer no legal protection or investment return.


To neutralize the opposition, both inside Cuba and abroad, the signers assert that the regime is promoting “reconciliation”, with the apparent backing of the Catholic Church hierarchy, but only as a smokescreen to intensify repression. Peaceful human rights activists are systematically harassed and arrested.


Instead of bailing out the failed and ruthless regime, the document calls for support of the leaders of the growing pro-democracy movement in Cuba. They, and not their oppressors, should receive international recognition, financial resources and communications technology to carry out their heroic struggle.


Here is the letter:


COMMITMENT TO FREEDOM


We, the undersigned, Cuban exiles with deep roots in U.S. and international corporations, institutions and business communities, wish to convey our great concern regarding the Castro regime’s deceptive campaign aimed at securing much-needed financial resources to prolong its iron grip over the people of Cuba.


The regime is facing the severest financial crisis since the early 1990s, compounded by the possible loss of its Venezuelan life line. But instead of ushering in a true economic and political opening that would unleash the entrepreneurial skills of the Cuban people and attract foreign capital, it has only introduced non-systemic, heavily-taxed, revocable reforms with no legal protection or investment return. To stay afloat, the regime is pursuing a three-pronged strategy: 


First, it is trying to induce the U.S. to lift or further weaken the embargo to funnel tourist dollars and bank credits to the bankrupt island--a bailout under the guise of constructive engagement.


Second, it has apparently enlisted the support of the Catholic Church hierarchy in Cuba to promote “reconciliation” under the current totalitarian system, while continuing to hound, beat and arrest peaceful opponents and human rights activists across the island.


Third, it is seeking to divide and neutralize the Cuban-American community, and lure some of its businessmen, by selling the fallacious concept that there is no solution to Cuba’s predicament other than supporting cosmetic reforms without liberty and democracy. 


We reject that outrageous proposition, since for us, and for most Cuban-Americans, there is no substitute for freedom. We believe that, absent the dismantling of the totalitarian apparatus on the island, along with the unconditional release of all political prisoners and the restoration of fundamental human rights, there should be no U.S. unilateral concessions to the Castro regime.


The future of the island-nation lies not with the current failed, octogenarian rulers, but with the leaders of the growing pro-democracy movement. They, and not their oppressors, are worthy of receiving international recognition, financial resources and communications technology to carry out their heroic struggle. 


We pledge our continued support to them--the vanguard of the emerging civil society--and look forward to helping in the reconstruction of the island where we were born, but only when the Cuban people can enjoy the blessings of freedom we cherish and they deserve. 


SIGNATORIES OF “COMMITMENT TO FREEDOM” 


Manuel Jorge Cutillas, Fr. Chairman and CEO, BACARDI
Sergio Masvidal, Fr. Vice Chairman, AMERICAN EXPRESS BANK
Enrique Falla, Fr. EVP and CFO, DOW CHEMICAL
Eduardo Crews, Fr. President, Latin America, BRISTOL-MEYERS SQUIBB
Emilio Alvarez-Recio, Fr. VP. Worldwide Advertising, COLGATE-PALMOLIVE
Néstor Carbonell, Fr. VP International Government Affairs, PEPSICO
Alberto Mestre, Fr. President, Venezuela, GENERAL MILLS
Rafael de la Sierra, Fr. VP International Coordination WARNER COMMUNICATIONS (now Time Warner)
Eugenio Desvernine, Fr. Senior EVP, REYNOLDS METALS
José R. Bou, Fr. VP Primary Products Operation, MARTIN MARIETTA ALUMINUM
Alberto Luzárraga, Fr. Chairman, CONTINENTAL BANK INTERNATIONAL
Remedios Diaz-Oliver, Fr. Director of U.S. WEST and BARNETT BANK
Leopoldo Fernández-Pujals, Chairman JAZZTEL; Founder of TELEPIZZA
Jorge Blanco, Fr. President & CEO, AMEX NICKEL CORPORATION.
Carlos Gutierrez, Fr. U.S. SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
Mel Martinez, Fr. U.S. SECRETARY OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Celebrating José Martí and Cuban Independence at the San Carlos Institute

Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness. - José Martí 

If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it. - Bishop Agustin Roman

The San Carlos Institute Celebrates the Life of Jose Marti and Cuba’s Independence 

May 17^th – 20^th, 2012

The San Carlos Institute of Key West invited the community to a four-day program in tribute of Jose Marti, Cuba’s founding father, journalist, and poet, and to celebrate the 110^th anniversary of Cuba’s independence from Spain. There is a still an opportunity to attend the final day of this outstanding program celebrating a Mass for Monsignor Agustin Roman.

The San Carlos Institute, founded in 1871, served as cradle of Cuba’s independence movement.  Jose Marti launched the final drive for Cuba’s independence from the San Carlos and affectionately referred to it as “La Casa Cuba.” (The Cuba House)

Highlights of the program thus far have included the following:

Musical performances by “La Coral Cubana,” a 40-voice choir, tracing the history of Cuba through its music, renowned soprano Virginia Alonso and violinist Andres Trujillo, and the 13-member band Tradicion Caribe.

The San Carlos also hosted the world premiere of Jose Marti: A Musical Tribute, with pieces selected by Emilio Cueto, and performed by Jose Ramos Santos, a distinguished Puerto Rican pianist and professor at The Catholic University of America. Ramos Santos was accompanied by two vocalists: mezzo soprano, Anamer Castrello and tenor, Eric Gramatges. The tribute was divided into two main themes: Music inspired by Marti's life and work and music with the texts by Marti.

There were also special viewings of the WPBT award-winning 2002 documentary “Jose Marti: Legacy of Freedom" by film director Joe Cardona on Saturday, May 19.

Distinguished guests included former Governor and U.S. Senator Bob Graham, and U.S. Congressman David Rivera, among many others.

The full program is available online but the remaining program for today, May 20, Cuban Independence Day is reproduced below.

Sunday, May 20

1:30 PM: Mass at San Carlos  in memory of San Carlos’ Board Member,  Bishop Agustin Roman, who passed away on April 11^th of this year.

3:00 PM: Jose Marti: A Musical Tribute  The concert includes pieces inspired by Marti, as well as pieces about some of his most famous poems. Emilio Cueto, a Washington, D.C.-based independent scholar, has conducted the research and selected the compositions, spanning over one hundred years and several countries. Jose Ramos, a distinguished Puerto Rican pianist and professor at The Catholic University of America, and two singers from the University Doctoral Program will perform the musical selections. (Admission: $25 per adult and $10 for students and children). (Admission: $25 adults/$10 students and children)

5:00 PM: Musical celebration of Cuban Independence Day by the 13-member band, Tradicion Caribe. Duval Street will rock to the best of Cuba's music.

When: Sunday, May 20, 2012

Where: The San Carlos Institute, 516 Duval Street, Key West, Florida

Tickets:  www.keystix.com

Transportation: 305-810-8454

The San Carlos Institute is a Cuban heritage center and museum founded in 1871 by Cuban exiles who came to Key West to plan the campaign for Cuba's independence from Spain. The San Carlos Institute is a not for profit organization maintained by private donations and the work of volunteers.