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Obama Ends “Wet Foot/Dry Foot” Policy for Cuban Refugees
America will, per a new last-minute decree from Obama, no longer automatically grant asylum to Cubans who make it to US shores. Instead, Cuban refugees (and they really are refugees from that island hellhole) will automatically be sent back to Cuba, overturning a policy that has been in effect since Castro seized control of the island nation. The current policy (known as Wet Foot / Dry Foot) was a product of the Clinton administration, and stipulated that Cubans had to actually touch US soil, where before they were given asylum merely for being picked up at sea.
I cannot help but think that this is part of Obama’s attempts to poke as many people as he can on his way out the door, for Obama must know that such people, when returned to Cuba, are likely to be imprisoned.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is ending a longstanding immigration policy that allows any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil to stay and become a legal resident, a senior administration official said Thursday.
The repeal of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy is effective immediately, according the official. The decision follows months of negotiations focused in part on getting Cuba to agree to take back people who had arrived in the U.S.
The U.S. and Cuba planned to issue a joint statement late Thursday. The official insisted on anonymity in order to detail the change ahead of the announcement.
The official said the Cubans gave no assurances about treatment of those sent back to the country, but said political asylum remains an option for those concerned about persecution if they return.
…
The “wet foot, dry foot” policy was put in place in 1995 by President Bill Clinton as a revision of a more liberal immigration policy. Until then, Cubans caught at sea trying to make their way to the United States were allowed into the country and were able to become legal residents after a year. The U.S. was reluctant to send people back to the communist island then run by Fidel Castro, and the Cuban government also generally refused to accept repatriated citizens.
The Cuban government has in the past complained bitterly about the special immigration privileges, saying they encourage Cubans to risk dangerous escape trips and drain the country of professionals. But it has also served as a release valve for the single-party state, allowing the most dissatisfied Cubans to seek better lives outside and become sources of financial support for relatives on the island.
For a look at the cultural impact of our Cuba policy, I recommend everyone to pick up a copy of Back to Blood, by Thomas Wolfe. I also suggest viewing Peter Robinson’s interview with Wolfe, given shortly after the book came out.
Published in General
Re: 29
Of course he knows that.
Absolutamente.
I was traveling and in a hotel room with nothing else to do but watch the television the night Janet Reno raided the house in Florida and stole Elian Gonsalez from his mother’s family. Here she had died trying to get him to freedom and safety in America, and Reno took her son by force and sent him back to Fidel Castro and to a father who never had anything to do with the boy in the first place. I was so angry. I grew up watching people climb over the Berlin Wall to our open and congratulating arms. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing Clinton do.
It is the grudge against the Clintons (and Reno was Hillary’s best friend) that I cannot let go.
What if Hillary had won?
Uh… you’re sure about that?
From Obama’s point of view it’s a two-fer. He wants people to live under dictatorial oppression, and he doesn’t want more Republicans in the U.S.A.
Well her is a chance for Trump and the Republicans to undo this right away come the inauguration.
Here’s one for Trump’s suggestion box. Open immigration from Cuba and Venezuela. Refugees from communist hell-holes make great Republicans.
Deport Obama.
Nah, just put him on a raft and point him toward Cuba.
Dictatorial thugs of the world unite! Or you’ll lose the people and have nothing left but their chains.
Obama’s gonna put ’em all back in chains.
It’s astounding what the man would do if unrestrained. He’s a nasty vindictive person.
When I was 16 years old, my daddy and I were on a trip to take trash to the dump. I love these trips because we would take the trash and stop and get breakfast and have a great time. On one of these jaunts, my dad looked at me and said he had noticed something he wanted to tell me about. He told me I had a knack with people, but I seem to know what makes them tick. Then he lowered his voice, and said that the way he figured that out with because when I get angry or irritated, I seemed to know exactly what to say to stick the verbal knife into someone and twist it. He also pointed out that I seem to enjoy it a bit too much. He told me that the words “I’m sorry” don’t fix that and that I was leaving a trail of damage in my wake.
I was devastated, and sputtered back excuses about what idiots other people were. He told me if people can’t hear my point because of how I phrased it, it doesn’t matter how right I am.
I think about the story a lot as I watch Obama’s actions during his last days. He doesn’t see the damage left in his wake. And he would rather have the self satisfaction of feeling right in the moment, then of getting the right thing done.
My Romanian step-daughter told me the news. She’s seriously ticked off. I agree with the suggestions that we go back to the pre-Clinton policy whereby all Cubans we pick up, on land or at sea, get preferential treatment as refugees…because they ARE refugees.
I think two motives are behind this:
This is what I think angers me the most. For all the talk about bubbles lately, he’s in the thickest bubble there is and nothing seems to penetrate it.
I think y’all have it all wrong.
“By taking this step,” Obama said, “we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries.”
His timing is a bit off, but clearly he is fixing to close the Mexican border and ship all the illegals back to the other side.
I agree. And I also wonder if it is retribution for the hard time we have been giving him about Syrian refugees (not of course the Christian refugees that he won’t let in) and the “refugees” from Central America.
Yes… but my suspicion is that this is being done to bog down the new Administration. It makes Trump play defence in the first weeks and months of his Administration, and ensures that he chooses between repealing this nonsense and moving his agenda forward.
The utter pettiness of this – and the harm caused to people who are oppressed, imprisoned, and killed – is its own problem.
Appears Fundemental Transformation unfolds in the remaining days of a petulant, conniving thin skinned con man. Bound and determined to poke so many in the eye upon while leaving. Learn anything yet.
And he has pledged to stick around, quite sickening.
Was there not a line in Becket the stated, Who will rid me of this Meddlesome Priest.
I’m so angry I can barely form words. For months we get lectures about how awful Trump is because he’s xenophobic. We got lectures on being compassionate to refugees. But then when it serves the Democrats’ interests, they close the door.
The Democratic Party is Geryon, the monster with the face of a just man.
Is he going to fill the toilets in the White House with cement?
Perhaps I’m simply projecting, given that I have now achieved this point myself, but what makes you think he doesn’t see the damage, as opposed to just not caring anymore? What are we going to do to him? Elect Donald Trump?
Yes, it’s petty. Though come the White Throne Judgement, I think this one will be very far down the list. But given that a sizable chunk of the Trump vote was based on “STOP IT! Get us back to the Status Quo Ante” rather than any positive agenda, I fail to see how simply giving him more to undo has a downside.
Especially given that most of what worries me about Trump is the new things he’d do. If Obama could rack up enough stupid to keep Trump occupied for 4 years, I might not object…
Maybe for these last few acts that’s the case, but in general I would say that the point about his bubble still holds. He’s still the same person who graded himself with “a good, solid B+” and said that the difference between the 2006 midterms for the Republicans and the 2010 midterms for the Democrats was that the Democrats had him.
This is all so confusing to me. So Cubans are Certified Refugees® that Conservatives are fine with, but Syrians or Mexicans are not? And Obama differentiating the other way between them makes him evil?
You don’t think he already has?
I loved those skits on SNL. Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer!
Democrats can never understand the idea of a precedent. They might want to start wondering what Trump might decide to do on the way out of office.
“Today, I’m declaring the island of Manhattan to be the Manhattan Island National Wildlife Refuge. Everyone has 30 days to vacate.”
Cubans come here to assimilate. Apparently the latest waves of Mexicans do not. Unvetted Syrians – what’s to worry?