Throwing The Baby Out With The Raft Water

I don’t know where the Miami Herald finds them, but they do.

The latest Cuban columnist, rhymes with communist, to get my attention is Myriam Marquez who is now making the case for the land of the free and the home of the brave to return EVERY Cuban who tries to escape the island back to Fidel & Raul.

Frankly, I’m having trouble following her logic. First she argues that the “real” refugees were those who came in the 60’s and in the 90’s like her cousins. Those who pay to escape are not worthy of political asylum because…I’m not sure. You escape a concentration camp and a life of slavery anyway you can.

Apparently, this Cubanita’s, rhymes with….oh never mind!, sensitivities where hurt when some recently exiled Cubans broke the law by committing Medicare-aid fraud and took their ill gotten gains back to Fidel rather than go to jail here.

Because of these bad mangoes, all Cubans that risk the shark infested Florida straights should be sent back because there’s a one in a million chance that they could possibly, maybe... do something that might embarrass the columnist in front of her otherwise open-minded Anglo friends. Pre-emptive deportations. Our version of the Cuban regime’s “peligrosidad” laws.

Ms. Marquez’s logic is that if the United States would take over all of the jailer’s responsibilities for the regime by returning every refugee that is either intercepted at sea or caught in Hialeah and ostensibly make all Cubans illegal aliens, that this would put pressure on the Cuban regime and force Cubans to revolt in helpless desperation. Cubans would stop escaping because they would know that they would be illegals in the US. (that's worked wonders with Haitians and Mexicans, by the way) and would be forced to jump in front of Castro's bullets instead of into a raft or awaiting smuggler's boat. In other words, the US government should help the Castro regime oppress Cubans in order to encourage the Cubans to help themselves be free. Got that?

If Ms. Marquez cares so much about safeguarding the Cuban Adjustment Act, she should argue that the “wet foot” policy instituted by the Clinton administration be scrapped because that rule is in direct conflict with the spirit and the letter of the Cuban Adjustment Act. Abolishing the “wet foot” provision would also do away with the arbitrariness of the wet foot/dry foot policy that she complains about. No wet foot, no problem. This would also put pressure on the Castro regime because a mass exodus would ensue and something would have to be done –quickly. I can make a dumb argument as well as anybody.(It’s a gift).

But it doesn’t seem that my solution would sit to well with Ms. Marquez who’s main motivation seems to be the fear of letting more Cubans in-darker, faster talking, shifty eyed ones with funny names that start with a "Y"-not like her cousins. After all, they’re just “potential” law breaking criminals. They used to say the same things about the Irish and the Italians, only it wasn’t the Irish and the Italians saying it about their own. Then again, they didn’t have the Miami Herald back then to scour the United States and look under every rock to find one that would be willing to denigrate their own in print, for money and condescending acceptance.

Ms. Marquez ends her piece with a warning:

U.S. benevolence has its limits.

Hmmm...

I wonder if that’s the same benevolent US that considered Cuba a fruit that was ripe for the picking and picked a war with Spain in order to annex Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines? Or the same benevolent US that shoved the Platt Amendment down our Cuban throats? Or the same benevolent US that ensured that Castro would take over by refusing to sell arms to Batista and by telling him that they would not longer support his government or that of "his" newly elected president? Or the same benevolent US that left 1,500 men to die on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs by reneging on the promised air cover? Or the same benevolent US that cut a deal with the USSR that sealed our future as an enslaved satellite of the USSR by agreeing not to invade Castro’s Cuba or allow any exiles to the same? Or the same benevolent US that due to all of the above, took responsibility and drafted The Cuban Adjustment Act as a way to remedy its foreign policy mistakes and bring some relief to its victims, only to later cut another deal with Castro and institute the wet foot/dry foot policy?

That benevolent US? ... Please!