Friday, January 12, 2018

One year ago today the Obama Administration gutted the Cuban Adjustment Act and closed the door to Cuban trafficking victims

Obama's terrible legacy in Cuba.

 

Florida Keys News reported on December 22, 2017 that "[f]or the second time in three months, Cuban migrants made landfall in the Florida Keys this week." This blog also documented Cubans trying to reach the United States in May of 2017. According to Elena Toledo writing in the PanAm Post 15,135 Cubans were declared “inadmissible” in the United States in 2017 and 14,037 Cubans were rejected from entering through Laredo, Texas alone. According to the Miami Herald, 15,410 Cubans entered the United States in fiscal year 2017.



These draconian measures are the result of an order issued by the Obama Administration one year ago today. The Office of the Press Secretary at The White House on January 12, 2017 released a "Statement by the President on Cuban Immigration Policy" that did two concrete things: further restricted the Cuban Adjustment Act and ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program.

They come not seeking the American dream but fleeing the Cuban nightmare
The Obama administration secretly negotiated with the Castro regime, and did not consult with Congress, in restricting the Cuban Adjustment Act which is US law. This is the second time that it has happened. From 1966 until 1995 The Cuban Adjustment meant that if a Cuban touched US territorial waters the Coast Guard would pick them up and take them to shore and they would obtain residency. Bill Clinton in 1995 reinterpreted the law to mean that Cubans had to touch land (dry feet) or be deported if caught in the water (wet feet). Now Obama has re-interpreted the law a step further saying that he will deport all Cubans who arrive in the US without a visa. This is a narrower interpretation of the law by the Executive branch without consulting with Congress.

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.

President Barack Obama on January 12, 2017 also shut the door on Cuban medical doctors, in third countries, victims of trafficking. Months earlier the Obama Administration  politicized the Trafficking in Persons Report of the State Department, undermining its credibility. This was done by the White House to placate long standing demands of the Castro regime and to whitewash the dictatorship's terrible record on human trafficking.

Cuban doctors trafficked and exploited by the Castro regime
Months after the door was closed to Cuban doctors in third countries, to placate the Castro regime, The New York Times in a September 29, 2017 article titled "Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’" exposed the Castro regime's trafficking in medical professionals.

"In a rare act of collective defiance, scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a “form of slave labor.” Thousands of Cuban doctors work abroad under contracts with the Cuban authorities. Countries like Brazil pay the island’s Communist government millions of dollars every month to provide the medical services, effectively making the doctors Cuba’s most valuable export."
Closing the door on thousands of Cuban medical doctors and dooming them to be exploited by a military dictatorship so that regime elites can cash in on billions of dollars was a decision taken by the outgoing Obama Administration on January 12, 2017. It is important to remember and observe this lamentable statement by President Obama on Cuban migration one year later.



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