Shame on The Miami Herald for its shortsighted editorial that will harm South Florida

Keep the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 and the Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980

Cuban migrants in Costa Rica in 2016

The Miami Herald editorial board on April 16, 2016 called for ending both the Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980 and the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966. Taking this course of action would be shortsighted and have a devastating impact on South Florida.  The Refugee Education Assistance Act of 1980 is a law that does the following it is: "An act to provide general assistance to local educational agencies for the education of Cuban and Haitian refugee children, to provide special impact aid to such agencies for the education of Cuban and Haitian refugee children and Indochinese refugee children, and to provide assistance to State educational agencies for the education of Cuban and Haitian refugee adults."

The current law does not guarantee federal assistance but states: "Certain Cuban and Haitian nationals who are neither refugees nor asylees may be eligible  for ORR - funded refugee assistance programs under Part 401 of Title 45 of the Code of Federal  Regulations (45 CFR 401)." This law is not targeted to asylum seekers or refugees as The Miami Herald editorial claims and eliminating it would be a disaster not only for Cubans and Haitians but also for South Florida.

Ending Refugee Education Assistance will shift costs to local taxpayers

The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act came into existence as the result of a migration crisis provoked by the Castro regime when it perceived the Johnson Administration as weak. It provided a mechanism to legalize tens of thousands of Cubans who had fled the Castro regime and were not free to return to their homeland.

Despite the claim made by The Miami Herald and President Obama there is no post-Cold War era with Cuba. The Carter administration in the 1970s and the Clinton administration in the 1990s sought to normalize relations with the Castro regime as Obama is doing now and the end result then as now were mass migration crisis with Mariel 1980 and the rafter crisis in 1994-1995 along with hostile actions by the Cuban dictatorship demonstrating that the Cold War was still underway. 

What has driven migration over the past half century has been the Cuban nightmare created by the Castro brothers combined with a perception of weakness of occupants in The White House. The crisis generated today in Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Mexico is regime created with the aim of achieving a long term objective: the end of the Cuban Adjustment Act and the knowledge that the Obama administration will not retaliate.  Every administration that engaged the Castro regime through unilateral concessions (LBJ, Carter, Clinton, and Obama) has seen migration waves used against it to shape policy. Administrations that took a harder line did not face these problems on their watch (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II).

History has demonstrated that it is not the Cuban Adjustment Act that generates mass migrations from Cuba, but rather administrations, perceived as weak by Castro, especially those that tried to normalize relations in 1977, 1993, and now 2013 that coincide with these crisis.

Contrary to the claims of The Miami Herald the Castro regime does not recognize the right of Cubans to enter and exit their own country. Tens of thousands of Cubans are not allowed to return to Cuba. The Cubans who are allowed to return must obtain a visa and pay exorbitant fees at a minimum more than three times ($250) what a non-Cuban would pay ($75) and up to eight times more ($605). No other country in this hemisphere has these restrictions. If the Cuban Adjustment Act is ended then these Cubans will exist in a legal limbo as Cubans in the United States did before 1966 or illegal and subject to deportation to a country that violates international law shooting fleeing Cuban refugees in the back.

Ending the Cuban Adjustment Act and stopping the Refugee Education Assistance Act as The Miami Herald is advocating  will cause harm not only to newly arrived Cubans and Haitians, but will also negatively effect local schools, and the local economy when the federal funds are cut. Immigration policy and the cost should fall within the realm of national policy and not be passed on to Miami-Dade County and Florida taxpayers straining local and state resources.    

The corruption condemned by The Miami Herald, the Sun Sentinel and the ongoing immigration crisis are not due to either the Cuban Adjustment Act or the Refugee Education Assistance Act but the failures of the Obama administration and its departments. Current law provides leeway to restrict those breaking the law or engaging in fraud that is all too often failing to take place. 

Finally, some advocates of engagement with the Castro regime look at the Cuban Adjustment Act as an obstacle for normalizing relations with the dictatorship. They are focused on getting rid of it addressing the emotional component while at the same time ignoring the human cost of ending it not only in the concrete terms already mentioned above but also in human rights terms. 

 

This mentality was perfectly represented in another controversy by Pedro Freyre, whose law firm, Akerman, represents Carnival who was quoted in The New York Times on April 22, 2016 concerning Carnival Cuba cruise controversy.“I had been around my community long enough to know that emotions are very deep here,” he said. “At the beginning, I said, ‘What? Why are people so upset - 300,000 travel every year to Cuba.’ But this one tugged at the heart strings.”  

The fact that Carnival had no issue with discriminating against an entire class of American citizens, because of their national origin, and went along with the Cuban dictatorship's demands is not primarily an emotional issue as Attorney Freyre, who is Cuban American, claimed in The New York Times but a legal and a civil rights issue with a particular resonance with U.S. history. Jim Crow segregation and the discrimination of entire classes of people by corporations bending to discriminatory laws in a variation of the "separate but equal" doctrine.  This is why there is a lawsuit underway against Carnival. 

This mentality is also at work in the efforts to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act and water down the State Department's Human Trafficking report on Cuba and what a Texas African American professor described as a variation of Dred Scott. 

 

Obama Administration's apparent failure with Cuban human rights violators

"True peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice" -Martin Luther King Jr.

On August 4, 2011 the Obama Administration announced a ban on visas for people who the State Department finds have been involved in human rights violations. Nevertheless, Juan O. Tamayo reported in the The Miami Herald on November 18, 2012 that human rights violators from Cuba are not only getting visas but residency in the United States:

"Former Cuban provincial prisons chief Crescencio Marino Rivero made headlines over the past month amid allegations that he abused some prisoners and ordered guards to abuse others before he moved to Miami two years ago.
But uncounted hundreds of other Cubans with nasty pasts are also living here, including State Security officers, snitches and collaborators, judges, policemen and members of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the neighborhood watch groups."

 The presidential directive signed on August 4, 2011 by President Barack Obama reads in part as follows:

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, by the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, as amended (8 U.S.C. 1182(f)), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, hereby find that the unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of persons described in section 1 of this proclamation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.  I therefore hereby proclaim that:
Section 1.  The entry into the United States, as immigrants or nonimmigrants, of the following persons is hereby suspended:

(a)  Any alien who planned, ordered, assisted, aided and abetted, committed or otherwise participated in, including through command responsibility, widespread or systematic violence against any civilian population based in whole or in part on race; color; descent; sex; disability; membership in an indigenous group; language; religion; political opinion; national origin; ethnicity; membership in a particular social group; birth; or sexual orientation or gender identity, or who attempted or conspired to do so.

(b)  Any alien who planned, ordered, assisted, aided and abetted, committed or otherwise participated in, including through command responsibility, war crimes, crimes against humanity or other serious violations of human rights, or who attempted or conspired to do so.

It appears that the presidential directive has not been vigorously enforced because it would as Human Rights Watch observed "strengthen the US government’s commitment and capacity to prevent mass atrocities and other grave human rights violations around the world" and Miami would not be filled with henchman of the Castro regime. The directive signed by the President is clear. Now the question remains when will it be vigorously enforced?

Fact Checking the Romney Campaign's Chávez For Obama Ad

President Barack Obama and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez

The Chavez for Obama political advertisement released by the Romney Campaign links together Hugo Chavez, Mariela Castro, and the image of Che Guevara in a thirty second spot which states the following (translation below courtesy of The Miami Herald):

NARRATOR: Who supports Barack Obama?
CHAVEZ: “If I were American, I’d vote for Obama.”
NARRATOR: Raúl Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, would vote for Obama.
CASTRO: “I would vote for President Obama.”
NARRATOR: And to top it off, Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.
CHAVEZ: “If Obama were from Barlovento (a Venezuelan town), he’d vote for Chávez.”
ROMNEY: I’m Mitt Romney, and I approve this message.

Below is the actual advertisement:


Supporters of the President have attacked it and the media has reported on the debate over the advertisement describing its content as controversial and incendiary, but the question remains, is it accurate? Is it true?

Three claims are made:

1) Hugo Chavez would vote for Obama if he were an American citizen.

Reuters reported on September 30, 2012 that Hugo Chavez had endorsed President Obama quoting the Venezuelan strongman saying: "I hope this doesn't harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I'd vote for Obama,"  ... "Obama is a good guy ... I think that if Obama was from Barlovento or some Caracas neighborhood, he'd vote for Chavez". The video in the advert does not represent or take out of context what Hugo Chavez is saying. The claim is accurate and true.

2) Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela Castro said as a citizen of the world she would vote for Obama.

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on June 4, 2012, Mariela Castro: "As a citizen of the world, I would like him to win," Castro told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview set to air Monday. "Seeing the candidates, I prefer Obama." ... "If Obama counted on the full support of the American people, then we can normalize the relationships; we can have better relations than what we had under President Carter". The claim is accurate and true.

3)  President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sent e-mails for Hispanic Heritage month with a photo of Che Guevara.

The Washington Post reported on September 14, 2012 that the EPA sent an e-mail out that "contained passages about Hispanic culture apparently copied word-for-word from Buzzle.com. And as icing on the oopsie-cake, it also featured a photo of a horse and buggy — no doubt meant to illustrate the picturesque elements of the culture — passing a painted billboard of Che Guevara." It was widely covered in the media. The claim is accurate and true.

The claims made in the advertisement are accurate and not taken out of context. It is not the advertisement that is incendiary or controversial but the affinity of a authoritarian despot, and the daughter of a dictator for President Obama and EPA circulating an image of Che Guevara, a mass murdering advocate for totalitarian dictatorship and a symbol for violent political action. 

Deja Vu at The Miami Herald?

The media circus returns to town and the question arises who benefits?

The Miami Herald has had some unfortunate episodes that have damaged its reputation as the newspaper of record. It appears that it maybe in the midst of suffering the indignity once again in the 2012 election cycle in which the stakes are a congressional seat.  The feeding frenzy over Congressman David Rivera, political consultant Ana Alliegro and candidate of Lamar Sternad in the August 2012 democratic primary had a certain troubling deja vu in terms of reporting quality. At the same time the bomb shell that the democratic nominee Joe Garcia has received thousands of dollars from pro-Castro figures is only mentioned in a few lines of a Herald story dealing with Cuba related donations being down in the 2012 elections:

The FEC reports show [Francisco Aruca of Marazul] also donated $5,000 to the current campaign of Garcia, a Miami Democrat who is running against Rep. David Rivera, R-Fl., an anti-Castro hardliner. [Maria Aral of ABC] gave $2,000 to Garcia and $10,000 to the Obama reelection campaign.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/16/v-fullstory/3006301/cuba-related-donations-are-down.html#storylink=cpy

The current controversy all over the news generates a number of questions. Lamar Sternad, one of the candidates in the democratic primary filed to run on November 4, 2011. In the 9/25/12 article the campaign consultant is quoted at what appears to be their first meeting in the Spring of 2012: “I asked a million times. Why are you running for Congress? Why don’t you run for something local?”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/24/v-fullstory/3019360/from-a-shooting-to-shoplifting.html#storylink=cpy

This implies that someone else may have "manufactured" the candidacy of Justin Lamar Sternad if he didn't decide on it himself. Who was it? In 2010 Roly Arrojo , a candidate billed as a Tea Party conservative candidate was a registered democrat that some say Joe Garcia placed into the general election to peel of votes from the Republican nominee because their was a business relationship between Garcia's campaign manager and the Democrat turned Tea Party candidate. Another question is the aggressive reporting on political consultant Ana Alliegro and her family. Why so aggressive?

Back in 2006 The Miami Herald smeared 10 journalists in a flawed story

 Being right in the middle of the current media storm it is difficult to offer a clear analysis of what is going on, in part because all the facts are not in. Therefore it is important to look back at a previous high profile episode that also became national news that was broke by The Miami Herald. In this case extensive and sloppy reporting targeting individuals with hyperbolic accusations and charges that in the end did not pan out was a horrible example of "gotcha journalism" that led to a black eye for the The Miami Herald but it did serve a political agenda.

It was six years ago this past September 8 that The Miami Herald published a story accusing 10 Miami journalists of violating ethical standards , including some who worked at the newspaper because they had freelanced or worked at Radio and TV Marti as reporters. They featured the reporters on the front page of The Miami Herald and the publisher fired two reporters based on the story and then had to hire them back and resigned when it became known that there had been a policy in place at El Nuevo Herald permitting journalists to moonlight at Radio / TV Marti.

One of the targets of the Herald story, Carlos Alberto Montaner offered the following breakdown of the objections raised with regards to the story:

(1) It contained ethnic prejudices. Everyone accused was Hispanic, even though there were Anglo journalists in the Herald's newsroom who collaborated with PBS and other public media, something that, besides, was frequent in American journalism.

(2) The El Nuevo Herald journalists who were accused of breaking the rule had permission from their supervisors, and it was a habitual practice, known for the previous 20 years, that had even been mentioned in the newspaper itself.

(3) The other journalists mentioned in the report, who were not Herald employees, worked in media where that peculiar rule did not exist and, therefore, should not have been included.

(4) The reporters who wrote the report did not bother to phone some of the people they were accusing, thus violating a basic rule of journalism.

(5) They maliciously insinuated that it was a band of corrupt journalists who had violated ethical standards, a message that was conveyed not only in words but also in the use of photographs.

(6) Suspiciously, before the report was published in The Herald, the Cuban government boasted on television of knowing the exact contents of the report that would soon be published. The authors, who had some direct or indirect contact with the Cuban government, didn't have the decency to communicate to their colleagues the type of investigation they were doing, mindless of the consequences of the moral lynching they were carrying out.  

Following the debacle Clark Hoyt conducted a review of the whole affair that was published in Editor & Publisher and arrived at some conclusions partially excerpted below on what he described as a flawed story:

Its placement at the top of Page One, its hard and accusatory tone and the large and breathless headline suggested something more sinister than the story actually reported. The subjects of the story said they felt treated as though they were criminals. Some especially objected to a set of "rogues' gallery'' photographs that appeared on Page 2A with the continuation of the story.

Finally, with more time, the Herald might have broadened the perspective of the story to report, as El Nuevo Herald and then the Herald later did, that journalists in Washington have taken money from other U.S. government broadcasting outlets, such as the Voice of America.

Although it was a flawed and hyperbolic story the Castro regime and its allies are still using it by periodically re-publishing it and further distorting it to serve its own propaganda aims in trying to release five Cuban spies that were convicted of spying and in the case of one of them conspiracy to commit murder in the Brothers to the Rescue case.

Oscar Corral while at The Miami Herald

Incidentally Oscar Corral, the Herald reporter who wrote the story and continued to write similar exposes that coincidentally benefited the dictatorship in Cuba ended up being boycotted by Cuban exile activists. A year later he was arrested trying to solicit sexual favors from an underage prostitute in Flagami. Needless to say his arrest did not receive the substantial coverage his colleagues had gotten a year earlier. Although initially claiming his innocence, and backed by the Editor of  The Miami Herald, he later pled out to a pre-trial diversion. Defending Corral was the official Cuban communist newspaper Granma.

Fast forward six years later and things have not improved at The Miami Herald. Six years ago it was an in house reporter generating the content now one of the main stories was broken on a blog then material used from it in a story published in the The Miami Herald without attribution. Also the author of the blog has his own issues that also go unmentioned.

As in the case of the 2006 story involving ten journalists it will be interesting to look back six years from now and try to understand what was actually going on with the benefit of hindsight. Will another Herald executive be writing about another flawed story?