Sen. Martinez' "notion"

Florida Senator Mel Martinez was on the Diane Rehm Show on Monday, and gave an interesting interview about his childhood in Cuba and other topics. He took a call from a listener who complained that as co-chair of the Administration’s Cuba commission, Martinez was responsible for the 2004 policy that limits family visits to once every three years, and allows visits to immediate family only. The Senator’s answer:

“The fact of the matter is that a difficult policy was instituted about family travel because, as you may know, a lot of people were coming from Cuba under the Cuban Adjustment Act, which allows Cubans, the only people in the world right now, I think, that can come to the United States, illegally essentially, and then be adjusted as legals just by the mere fact that they touch shore, the wet foot dry foot policy which I don’t frankly agree with. But the Cuban Adjustment Act also says that the reason why that they can do that is because of fear of persecution. Well, those same people who were coming in recent days and recent years were returning to Cuba repeatedly, and so if you arrive and say. “Please harbor me here because if I return to Cuba I have a reasonable fear of being persecuted,” I’m not going to be treated, the Cuban government is going to do something to me. But then in a matter of few months you go back and forth travel back and forth constantly, as so many people are doing, it really makes a sham out of that whole notion.”

Well, it certainly would make a sham of that “notion,” if indeed it existed in the law. But it doesn’t.

In fact, the Cuban Adjustment Act doesn’t even contain the word “persecution.”

By using the phrase “reasonable fear of being persecuted,” Senator Martinez implies that Cubans who come to America are refugees, because that’s what you have to demonstrate to get refugee status. But very few are: 2,922 last year, and 3,143 in 2006. (The only sense in which Cuban immigrants are all refugees is that they are all eligible for benefits that the U.S. government extends to refugees.)

The idea that Cubans who travel to Cuba are breaking a pledge they made to gain entry, is unfounded. When Cubans come without visas, all they need to do to gain entry is to say they are Cuban. Then they are admitted (“paroled”) not because the law requires it, but because U.S. Administrations have decided they want to. The Cuban Adjustment Act only comes into play a year later, when their status is adjusted.

Senator Martinez isn’t the first to use this bottom-of-the-barrel argument. Setting aside its total inaccuracy, it’s beyond me why he and others find it politically compelling. When the Administration’s 2004 family sanctions were announced, the argument was that the travel and remittance restrictions would cut Cuba’s hard currency flows.

I guess that one wore out.

Or maybe it’s hard to look a Cuban American in the eye and say that even though Cuba’s economy is growing, and Chavez is delivering tons of oil to Havana, and other countries are providing aid and credits, it’s all on you, pal – we had to stop you from sending money to your aunt because we’re hastening the end of the dictatorship, and the money you send her will keep Castro in power.