Obama Caves to Castro—AGAIN!
Humberto Fontova | January 14, 2017
"President Obama said Thursday that he was terminating the 22-year-old policy that has allowed Cubans who arrived on United States soil without visas to remain in the country and gain legal residency, an unexpected move long sought by the Cuban government." (italics mine.)
“Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities,” Mr Obama said in a statement. “By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.”
To many Americans this policy probably sounds reasonable—and long overdue. I mean, why should Cubans get preferential treatment? Especially if they’re coming from a nation that a few years ago Tina Brown’s Newsweek proclaimed as enjoying among the world’s “Best Quality of Life!” Not to be outdone, just last year Time magazine proclaimed that “people enjoy life in Cuba as in few other places!”
Think I jest?
Tell it to Miguel Fonseca and Alberto Vázquez, Time and Newsweek. On Christmas Eve, 2000, a British Airliner opened its landing gear near Heathrow airport after taking off from Havana and out dropped their two corpses, frozen solid. Miguel and Alberto were 16 years old. “Crazy blokes!” probably huffed some of the passengers, oblivious or uncaring that all those pounds they’d just spent on their Cuban vacation went straight into the coffers of the Stalinist military and police who drove the Cuban boys to such deadly desperation.
In July 2002, the frozen and battered corpse of a of 20 year old Cuban identified only as Wildredo D. was found in the landing gear of a Lufthansa Airliner at Dusseldrof airport.
In September 1999, odor led officials of Italy’s Varese Airport to the decomposed corpse of Roberto García Quinta in the landing gear of an Alitalia Airlines flight that had landed from Cuba ten days earlier. Yet in 1958 (the year before the glorious “revolution”) the Cuban Embassy in Rome had a backlog of 12,000 applications for immigrant visas from Italians clamoring to immigrate to Cuba.
The boys above join an estimated 70,000 Cubans dying (literally) to leave the Castro brothers’ and Che Guevara’s handiwork. Almost two million Cubans have made it out alive, from a nation formerly swamped with immigrants.
Anyway, here’s a few items regarding Obama’s bombshell (and possibly unconstitutional, as usual, Congress was not consulted) abrogation of the “Wet-Foot, Dry Foot Law” that is being scrupulously “overlooked” by the usual purveyors of fake news. All of these purveyors, by the way, have all been gratefully bestowed Havana “news” bureaus and “journalist” visas by a totalitarian regime:
First off, this U.S. immigration policy wasn’t invented for Cubans.
Our status upon reaching U.S. shores actually had little to do with so-called "political pandering to the powerful Cuban-exile lobby," and everything to do with something called the Refugee Relief Act signed into law by President Eisenhower in August 1953 to assist Iron Curtain refugees.
Came Castro's Stalinist regime in 1959 and Cuba’s became a regime more oppressive than East Germany’s or Hungary’s and the Florida straits became a barrier far deadlier than the Iron Curtain. In fact, over twenty times as many Cubans died trying to breach it than Germans attempting to breach the Berlin Wall.
Essentially the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 simply codified the 1953 Refugee Relief Act for victims of tropical Stalinism.
Now here’s a very important exception within Obama’s executive order this week:
"(Obama) Officials said the changes (in the Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot) would not affect a lottery that allows 20,000 Cubans to come to the U.S. legally each year," reports the AP.
You see amigos: concurrent with the Wet-Foot, Dry Foot law back in 1995, the Clinton Administration agreed to issue 20,000 visas to Cuban "refugees" annually.
But for the past few years, under Obama, the process of choosing these "refugee" visa applicants was outsourced to the Castro regime!
This means that Castro's snickering apparatchiks issue most of these visas to Cubans who don't qualify as political refugees by any stretch.
Instead they qualify as Cubans who will get to the U.S.,
sprint off the planes to the nearest welfare office,
promptly apply for their benefits
(for which the regime even offered classes and tutoring!)--
and promptly start sending remittances to their families back in Cuba.
Among Obama’s first executive orders upon assuming office back in 2009, by the way,
was opening the remittance financial lifeline from the U.S. to the Castro regime which had been capped by Bush.
was opening the remittance financial lifeline from the U.S. to the Castro regime which had been capped by Bush.
Upon arrival of these wire transfers of U.S. dollars in the Castro fiefdom, the Stalinist regime immediately lops off a healthy “surcharge” of about 20%--and ultimately gets the rest when the money (much at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer) is spent in state-owned stores.
This racket remains untouched by Obama--and for the simple reason that Castro obviously didn't want it touched.
And for the simple reason that remittances from the U.S. to Cuba (i.e. free money) are estimated as from $3.8-to $4 billion annually!) That's about what the Soviets used to send Castro annually during the height of their sponsorship in the 70-80's—all thanks to Obama!
And for the simple reason that remittances from the U.S. to Cuba (i.e. free money) are estimated as from $3.8-to $4 billion annually!) That's about what the Soviets used to send Castro annually during the height of their sponsorship in the 70-80's—all thanks to Obama!
Now, the U.S. Doctor Asylum program, which Obama also abrogated this week, was costing the Castro regime, because it hurt their "Doctor Diplomacy" (human-trafficking by any other name.)
You see, amigos: In this racket the Stalinist regime sends doctors (mostly unqualified) to poor and/or friendly countries around the world. The poor sap of a host country then pays the Castro regime--NOT the doctors!--for whatever "medical services" (butcheries and quackery) the hapless Cuba-trained doctors perpetrate.
“The Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program,” started back in 2006, encouraged these hapless Cuban doctors to defect while overseas. So it often cost the Castro regime what the poor sap host country would have paid the hapless quack doctor.
So naturally this program had to go, Castro's apparatchiks demanded of Obama. And POOF!--go it did this week, as among Obama’s parting gifts to the terror-sponsoring Stalinist who craved to nuke his nation.
In brief, this ain't "normalization."
It's further appeasement/surrender.
http://m.townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2017/01/14/obama-caves-to-castroagain-n2271343
