Why the Cuban Adjustment Act Should Not Be Repealed

“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentors, not the tormented Wherever anyone is persecuted for their race or political views, that place must become the center of the universe.” - Elie Wiesel 

Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, has distributed a draft of his bill that would repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act, passed in 1966, permits most Cubans who simply touch U.S. soil to enter the United States and become legal permanent residents a year and a day later.  However, Bill Clinton changed that in an immigration agreement in 1995 with the Castro regime that ushered in the infamous wet foot - dry foot policy by executive order.

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 a large part of what has led to South Florida being filled with regime oppressors and who knows how many spies.

 
Unfortunately, the reasons for the Cuban Adjustment Act remain unchanged.  Cuba remains a totalitarian, communist regime that systematically denies Cubans their rights, including the right to enter and exit their own country. Cubans continue to be shot and killed for trying to leave the island and continue to be denied the right to return. 

The December 17, 2014 announcement of normalized relations was also surrounded by repression, violence and death. Just a day earlier on December 16 the Cuban coastguard ram and sank a boat with 32 refugees.

Diosbel Díaz Bioto and Yuriniesky Martínez Reina both killed trying to leave

One of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, went missing and is presumed dead. The rest were repatriated and detained. Less than four months later Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) 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.

This sets Cuba apart from every other country in the Western Hemisphere. This is why the Cuban Adjustment Act is not "special treatment" but a recognition that the regime in Cuba is different than others in this hemisphere and requires a different policy.

For decades the radical left has, along with the Castro regime, denounced the Cuban Adjustment Act and continue to demand its repeal. The regime's argument is that the Cuban Adjustment Act is the reason for Cubans wanting to leave while at the same time denying the repressive, failed and criminal nature of the regime that drives Cubans to flee.

What is disturbing is that the pretext for repealing the Cuban Adjustment Act is now being echoed by some Republicans and conservatives who claim that some how because the Obama Administration has "normalized" relations with the Castro regime that things have changed. The reality is that the human rights situation has deteriorated and levels of violence escalated since President Obama announced the new Cuba policy.

It is also important in the midst of the current debate to remember that the Castro regime has a permanent campaign of demonizing two million Cubans in Miami regardless of ideological and philosophical differences, that are normal in a free society, and lump them all together under a destructive stereotype that has had an impact internationally. 

Carlos Alberto Montaner concluded that "Cuba is one of those states that seeks to destroy the collective image of their emigrants and the particular image of those people that they have decided are their enemies." Fidel Castro has engaged in extreme acts to paint the Cuban diaspora in the worse possible light and his brother Raul Castro is most likely continuing the practice today. 

This should not be an argument for repealing the Cuban Adjustment Act but for enforcing the laws already on the books. That this demonization, carried out by totalitarian networks and agents of influence, is also being used as an argument to repeal the Cuban Adjustment Act reveals that it is part of an agenda.

With the current occupant in the White House wanting to grant the Castro dictatorship as many of its demands as possible combined with anti-immigrant sentiment in the country, a perfect storm is brewing that could lead to the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act. It is tragic that Cuban Americans be a contributing factor in stripping Cubans of one of the few protections that they have.

Ending the Cuban Adjustment Act will not end Cubans fleeing to the United States but will lead to greater acts of desperation to flee a worsening situation on the island, but with even more Cubans deported. Without the Cuban Adjustment Act, human trafficking will continue and sham marriages for Cubans to obtain citizenship will explode. 

None of this will benefit either Cubans or U.S. national interests. However, it will achieve a long term policy goal of the Castro dictatorship and will be another step in the Obama administration's normalization of relations with the dictatorship in Cuba. Sadly, many who today are advocating the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment act will come to regret it, if it comes to pass.

It appears that many have forgotten that Cubans do not come to the United States pursuing the American dream but fleeing the Cuban nightmare.

It is for this reason that I say: Not in my name.

Version of this essay first published in The Canal.

Rising repression in Cuba met by indifference from the U.S. State Department

State Department official explains human rights not a priority in Cuba as situation there worsens

Family of three arrested during 2015 Papal visit denounce the Castro regime today.

More than 200 activists detained today in Cuba for peacefully assembling and three days ago on November 5, 2015 two activists, Geovanys Izaguirre Hernandez and Laudelino Rodriguez Mendoza, were sentenced to six months in prison following a summary judgement.

The human rights situation in Cuba continues to deteriorate and the regime's behavior overseas remains as hostile to U.S. interests as ever but the drive to embrace the dictatorship by the Obama administration continues. Ambassador David Thorne, a senior adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry from Havana on November 3, 2015 explained the Obama administration's priority in Cuba is not human rights.

"As in other parts of the world, we are really trying to also say: Let's find out how we can work together and not always say that human rights are the first things that we have to fix before anything else."

Unfortunately, not making human rights a priority in foreign policy when dealing with foreign regimes has had catastrophic consequences for the United States in the past. The direction taken by the Obama administration in Cuba does not serve U.S. interests or the aspirations of Cubans to live in freedom. In short it is shaping up to be a disastrous failure.

Freedom House President Questions Upgrading Cuba in 2015 Trafficking Report

Further evidence that 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report was politicized with respect to Cuba.

“The U.S. Anti - Trafficking Report and Diplomacy: Sustaining Candor and Credibility” 

Written Testimony by Mark P. Lagon 

President, Freedom House 

House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations 

Hearing: “ Demanding Accountability : Evaluating the 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report ” 

November 4 , 2015

Excerpt from full statement:

Cuba was upgraded to Tier 2 Watch List. With a diplomatic opening unmatched by any political opening, Freedom House ranks Cuba as Not Free. Some might claim a past downward political bias against Cuba in U.S. trafficking assessments was removed with the diplomatic opening. I do not look at the past that way.

The grounds for an upgrade are deeply questionable. The Report says:

• “The penal code does not criminalize all forms of human trafficking” on paper, not to speak of enforcement. 
• The Cuba regime did not even dissemble and claim any “efforts to prevent forced labor” nor “any trafficking - specific shelters. ” 

It is far - fetched to suppose that there is no forced lab or in state enterprises or for political prisoners in one of the world’s few remaining Marxist - Leninist states. Also, a burgeoning sex industry – welcoming sex tourism – fuels exploitation , despite steps the Report notes taken by Cuba to address sex trafficking .

Source: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA16/20151104/104161/HHRG-114-FA16-Wstate-LagonM-20151104.pdf

Human Rights, The Cuban Exodus and U.S. Policy

Breaking through the regime sanctioned narrative

Members of the Ladies in White and activists in Havana on 11/1/15

The human rights situation in Cuba continues to deteriorate. This past weekend over 150 nonviolent activists were arrested for trying to exercise their rights. Cuban human rights defenders reported 1,093 arbitrary detentions in the month of October 2015. There are also new cases of activists, arbitrarily detained and held for months in prison. They have been threatened with political show trials. The regime in Cuba remains a totalitarian, communist dictatorship that visits violence upon nonviolent dissidents.

Jailed since September 20, 2015 for addressing Pope Francis

 UNPACU members, Zaqueo Baez Guerrero, Ismael Bonet Rene and Lady in White Maria Josefa Acón Sardiñas, were arbitrarily detained on September 20, 2015 for wanting Pope Francis, the foreign press, and through this, the world, to know that in Cuba there are political prisoners who survive in subhuman conditions, that the dictatorship in the island tramples the rights and fundamental freedoms of human beings, and that the repressive forces beat nonviolent women and men who want a fair, democratic and prosperous Cuba. The dictatorship in Cuba has also extra-judicially executed nonviolent opposition activists.

There continue to be new prisoners of conscience locked up in Cuba. On October 22, 2015 twenty activists nonviolently protested in Havana before the prosecutor's office demanding the release of Zaqueo Baez, Ismael Bonet and Maria Josefa. Now Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco and Wilberto Parada Milán have been taken and jailed.

Hugo Damián Prieto Blanco detained after 10/22/15 protest

Artists remain jailed in Cuba for their words. On January 28, 2015, the rapper Maikel Castillo Pérez  stage name, El Dkano - Maikel Oksobo, was sentenced to a year in prison in Havana. He was targeted for having used music to express his dissenting political opinions. El Dkano was sentenced under a charge known as ‘peligrosidad predelictiva’ (‘dangerousness that is likely leading to a crime’), which is used to imprison dissidents for long terms. The 31-year-old’s lyrics are known for criticizing the Castro regime. He once described his style as that of someone who “doesn’t make concessions with a system full of liars.”

Beyond the strictly political there is also the use of Cuban workers and professionals in slave like conditions to enrich the Castro regime to the tune of billions of dollars.

Tony Díaz Sánchez is a Cuban opposition leader who become a prisoner of conscience in March of 2003 and spent the next seven plus years unjustly imprisoned in Cuba. He is not allowed to return to Cuba by the Castro regime. Over Facebook he made the following contribution to the debate on the Cuban Adjustment Act:

"There is an increasing exodus from Cuba, an exodus whose cause is neither the existence nor the possible elimination of the Cuban Adjustment Act. An exodus that is a consequence of the lack of rights and freedoms suffered by the Cuban people. For many, it is easier to ask for the removal of the Cuban Adjustment Act than to ask for the end of the repressive police state, and the misery established by tyranny, for many it is more logical to visit than to condemn them. It makes more sense to negotiate than demand, more logical be their partner than to be their adversary. For that reason, by mere hypocrisy and petty interests that they blame the Adjustment Act for the increase in the arrival of Cubans. They may eliminate the law and put an end to this most comprehensive and humane act of solidarity, of the great American nation. What they will not do is to try to end the regime that made necessary the Act and therefore Cubans will continue leaving and fleeing Cuba to the Diaspora . Yes to the Cuban Adjustment Act."

Unfortunately, all indications are that the Obama Administration's Cuba policy of normalizing relations with an abnormal regime is entrenching the worse elements of the dictatorship.

For example, US Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas visited Cuba and held talks on October 28, 2015 with the Castro dictatorship’s recently named Interior Minister, Major General Carlos Fernandez Gondin, who has a record as a particularly brutal regime official with the nickname "Fairy Godmother" because "he loves to make numbers out of names and turn people into a national security issue."

The exodus of Cubans will continue because they are fleeing from a repressive and exploitative dictatorship. The Obama administration's Cuba policy like Clinton's and Carter's in the past, embracing the dictatorship at the expense of Cubans and their human rights, is what drives Cubans to despair and flee the island because they perceive that it will extend the life of the dictatorship.

Five points to consider about the Cuban Adjustment Act

"Whoever is elected leader of the empire should not ignore that Cuba demands the total removal of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act..." - Fidel Castro, July 26, 2000

Refugees massacred by the Castro regime in 1994. Still happens in 2015

1. Cuba is subjected to a totalitarian, communist regime that systematically denies Cubans their rights, including the right to enter and exit their own country. On December 16, 2014, the Cuban coast guard rammed and sank a boat with 32 refugees, one of them, Diosbel Díaz Bioto, went missing and is presumed dead. The rest were repatriated and detained. Less than four months later, Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río Seco Rodríguez in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba, for peacefully trying to leave Cuba. The Castro regime for decades has engaged in the murder of fleeing refugees. A particularly egregious, well documented, example is the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre in which 37 men, women and children were killed.

Yuriniesky Martínez Reina, in orange, with his dad and son (L). Shot in the back (R)

2. The Castro regime and its agents of influence have been and continue to demand the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) claiming that it is this law and not the repressive nature of the regime that provokes massive immigration. The dictatorship denounces it claiming that "from the very beginning, the Cuban Adjustment Act reflected a discriminatory and immoral stance against the Cuban people."

3. Ending the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) will assist the Castro regime in maintaining control of an enslaved population. Not only in Cuba, but also in third countries where they are sent in slave-like conditions to work for the Castro regime in order to profit the Castro family and a tight nucleus of elites in the military and intelligence apparatus. The New York Times echoes the complaint of the Castro regime, protesting policies that allow Cuban doctors working under inhuman conditions to get to the United States.  In 2008 The Miami Herald reported that "more than 31,000 Cuban health workers -- most of them doctors -- who toil in 71 countries brought in $2.3 billion last year, ..., more than any other industry, including tourism. Most of them are paid $150 to $375 a month, a small percentage of the cash or trade benefits the Cuban government pockets in exchange for theirwork."

Cuban health care workers sent abroad in slave-like conditions

 4. Since 2000 there has been large scale trade between American companies and the Castro regime. The Castro regime used openings in trade from the Clinton era (medical products in 1992 and agricultural products in 2000)  to build up a pro-Castro lobby and to target congressional districts in agricultural states to advance its interests. The dictatorship accomplished this by purchasing American exports and requiring U.S. corporations and members of Congress to sign "advocacy contracts" that turned them into lobbyists for the dictatorship as a condition of the Castro regime buying their goods. Trade between these companies and the Castro regime reached their peak in 2008 totaling five billion dollars by 2015 but trade levels crashed during the Obama administration.  The dictatorship is demanding an end to the trade embargo (opening up credits that would leave American taxpayers holding the bag) and an end to the Cuban Adjustment Act.  Two of the Republicans pushing for the end of the Cuban Adjustment Act, Walter Jones of North Carolina and Ted Poe of Texas are also advocates of ending the embargo on the Castro regime and providing those doing business with the dictatorship export financing credits.

Cuban rafters fleeing a repressive totalitarian regime

5. Cubans, despite the rhetoric, do not have a special privilege but rather special circumstances that led to the Cuban Adjustment Act that unfortunately are not historically unique. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act  was not the first such measure, the Hungarian Escape Act of 1958 granted Hungarians refugee status predates it by eight years. Nor was it the last, the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act of 1975 granted refugees from the conflict in South East Asia special status. The United States has had an immigration policy favoring those leaving communist states.

Conclusion:  Cubans are fleeing the Castro regime because it is a communist, totalitarian dictatorship that systematically denies their human rights. The Cuban dictatorship has had a long term policy goal of repealing the Cuban Adjustment Act and the ability of Cubans working for them under slave-like conditions to flee to freedom in the United States. Unfortunately, ending the Cuban Adjustment Act will complement the Obama Administration's policy of normalizing relations with the communist dictatorship in Cuba at the expense of the freedom and well being of the Cuban people. This will also have the unintended effect of provoking an exodus from the island.