Cuban Doctor Defection Plan, Success or Failure?

Like everything else, it depends on how you define Success

More on the Cuban Doctor defections from the Miami Herald.

The Miami Herald has a different take on the Doctor defection program than I do. They consider the program a success since it has enticed hundreds of Cuban doctors “serving” in third world countries to apply for US entry.

Since some of these Doctors have risked their lives to defect and are still stuck in “limbo”, I won’t consider the program a real success until the process has been further fast tracked and the doctors are safely within US borders.

But any efforts made by any government to help fellow Cubans who are serving as indentured servants is greatly appreciated.

U.S. program for defecting Cuban doctors a success

Hundreds of Cuban doctors and other medical personnel who defected in third countries - - and one magician -- have applied for fast-track U.S. entry under a special program launched six months ago, U.S. officials say.

More than 100 already have arrived in the United States under the program, and hundreds more are hiding in places like Bolivia and Venezuela, awaiting U.S.background checks to ensure they are medical professionals and not rights abusers or Cuban government agents.

Something to be proud of: (definitely not a failure)

South Florida's Cuban American community has been pitching in to help the defectors with guidance and some financial assistance while they await the U.S. entry permits.

One group of Cuban doctors in the United States, created two years ago to help their brethren on the island, has been expanding its program to help doctors who defect third countries and want to enter the United States.

Doctors who defect often wait in safe houses in places like Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Argentina. They receive a small stipend for expenses and relatives in Miami usually pay for their air fare to the United States.

Article Here

Solidaridad sin Fronteras (Solidarity without Borders) website:

BarrioAfuera.com.

Wet Doctor/ Dry Doctor

Jorge Toledo, a Cuban physician, and his wife, Leticia Viamonte, an ophthalmologist,

are among the Cuban doctors stuck in Colombia.(Fernando Vergara / Associated Press)

The LA times (via the Sun Sentinel) sheds light on the Cuban Doctor’s Asylum program fiasco via the Sun Sentinel.

While we applaud the administration’s attempt to free the Cuban Missionary Doctors from their indentured servitude, but we condemn the lack of an effective plan to live up to the promise of asylum made by last summer’s invitation.

What seems to be the root of the problem , according to local sources, is that the Cuban doctor’s program are very popular in the host countries. In the host countries doctors and other health care professionals who have invested a lot of time and money in an education, don’t want to practice in impoverished, remote and or dangerous areas and since the host countries have at least some vestiges of human rights, the native doctors cannot be forced to work there. Cuban doctors, like all Cubans are slaves to the Cuban regime so they are sent to do the work that natives wont do. Providing Havana with hard currency and propaganda. The American diplomats stationed in embassies in the host countries don’t want to starin relation with the hosts government so they are “reluctant” “hesitant” and “less than cooperative in Cuban Doctors asylum cases.


U.S. leaves Cuban physicians in limbo

BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA — Family practitioner Alberto Hernandez suffers anxiety attacks. Dentist Norah Garcia is prone to bouts of uncontrollable sobbing.
General practitioner Cesar Fernandez, 31, has high blood pressure.

They are among the tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, surgeons and dentists
dispatched from their Cuban homeland as medical missionaries to some of the world's poorest countries, in the process earning hard currency for the communist regime. But instead of providing much-needed healthcare, they have been caught up in a wider struggle between leftist Latin American leaders and the Bush aministration.

Last summer, the administration announced that any Cuban medical professional sent abroad was eligible for political asylum. Frustrated with their efforts in a program that took them to Venezuela's barrios, or hoping to start a new life in the United States, dozens of Cuban healthcare professionals sneaked across the Colombian border.

Now they're holed up in Colombia, unable to work, while U.S. authorities mull
whether to accept them as political refugees.

Rest Here