A bipartisan group of Cuban-Americans in Congress Thursday irrationally blasted President Obama’s termination of the United States’ so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy with Cuba.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., called the change “absurd.”
To paraphrase an infamous rebuttal by Obama during a 2012 presidential debate, the 1960s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back. While the outgoing president may have been wrong about Russia, he’s right about Cuba.
Our special treatment of Cubans is a Cold War relic that Republicans can no longer justify in this era of immigration and entitlements reform.
For the past 50 years, any Cuban who made it to American soil had been fast-tracked to a green card, government welfare and, ultimately, citizenship. Unlike immigrants from every other nation, Cubans weren’t turned away even if they didn’t have a visa.
A 1995 revision to the immigration law, known as “wet foot, dry foot” policy, required Cubans to arrive by land or air for admission to the United States. Those caught on waters between the two nations were sent back home. Over the years, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have benefited from these favorable circumstances. Obama said his repeal ends Cubans’ advantage “immediately.”
As of today, Cubans, like all other immigrants, can still immigrate here. But now they must wait in a long green card line, unless they can prove they’re oppressed refugees.
The previous policy made sense when it was conceived in the 1960s to give asylum to approximately 300,000 Cubans who were in legal limbo after fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution. But in recent years it’s been used, and too often abused, by people who can come and go, making a mockery of the law’s raison d’être.
A State Department survey of visa applicants in 2009 found “overwhelmingly” that Cubans were economic migrants, not political refugees fleeing communism. Many of those leaving were wealthy, educated and entrepreneurial professionals, causing a brain drain on Cuba’s economy.
Unlike any other nationality claiming asylum as refugees, Cubans didn’t need to provide proof they suffered persecution.
Cuba, of course, has problems. But the situation there is not as dire as it is in many other places. I know because I took my college journalism class there last year to cover the changes underway.
There is poverty, but not misery. Cubans receive free education through college, world-class healthcare and food subsidies. Housing and transportation costs are low. Gun crime is virtually nonexistent.
The government is oppressive, but has become much more tolerant in recent years, according to a 2015 report from the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation. Dissidents are being persecuted less, Internet access is rapidly expanding and private businesses are finally allowed.
While it’s understandable that Cubans may want to leave to seek a better life, are they really more deserving than, say, Mexicans fleeing drug cartels or Syrians escaping war? Maintaining such an unfair policy would make it more difficult to push for stricter enforcement against unauthorized immigration.
Cubans’ special perks have come at a great expense to Americans, too. Public benefits provided to Cuban immigrants amount to nearly $700 million annually, according to a 2015 Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel probe. Even Cuban-Americans believe the policy needs to change. Two-thirds agree that only Cubans who have suffered political persecution deserve preferential treatment, a 2015 poll found.
Many among the other third, however, have lobbied politicians aggressively to maintain the preferential policy. I’m sure I’ll receive some angry emails about this column as I did when I proposed the same policy change a year ago.
But it’s been long overdue we closed Cubans’ E-ZPass lane to U.S. citizenship.
Mark Grabowski is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a journalism professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
