If they’re gonna vote for Obama and travel to Cuba, let ’em stay in Cuba

Hans de Salas del Valle of the University of Miami’s Cuba Transition Project and Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies has written a remarkable paper on Cuban immigration to the United States. He makes no policy recommendations but makes it pretty clear that he wants to see far fewer Cubans coming to America.

El Nuevo Herald covered it today and provides a link to the paper itself; Alejandro Armengol comments in his blog here.

The paper is remarkable because it is so political, even partisan in its approach. It’s even more remarkable because it is a blunt appeal to resentment of immigrants that one sees made against immigrant communities, but never within an immigrant community.

But there’s the rub – because in de Salas’ view, “post-Soviet Cuban migrants” don’t fit in the community, el exilio historico. They travel back and forth to Cuba, they “will increasingly break with the historic Cuban-American exile community’s conservative principles and allegiances” and “could transform the once Republican bastion of Cuban Miami into a new Democratic enclave.”

I’m all for reviewing U.S. policy toward Cuban immigrants, which is an anomaly in more ways than one can count. If you believe in the embargo as an instrument of pressure, it takes away that pressure by giving discontented Cubans a way out. The “dry-foot” policy, which is not required by law, allows Cubans who arrive here without a visa to come right in even if they have no basis for asylum or refugee status. The quick, nearly automatic admission of nearly all Cubans makes a mockery of the “state sponsor of terrorism” designation. The policy extends immigration privileges to people who were born and lived their lives outside Cuba, but have Cuban parents. It gives Cuban doctors serving on missions abroad a pass to come to the United States, even if they could remain without trouble in a country of first asylum. It allows Cubans who apply to immigrate on the basis of family unification to come on an expedited basis, an option not available to other nationalities. And, as de Salas documents (partially), it gives Cuban immigrants the package of government benefits that go to refugees, even though the vast majority of Cuban immigrants do not have refugee status. Given all that, de Salas seems alarmed that so many Cubans come each year, legally and otherwise – but if those policies were in place toward any other nearby country with economic troubles, wouldn’t the result be the same?

Here’s the partisan part: In de Salas’ paper, there are just two villains behind these policies: Presidents Clinton and Obama. But the U.S.-Cuba migration accords, negotiated by President Clinton, were maintained and observed by President Bush. And the benefits and privileges listed above have sat pretty well with Cuban Miami’s “conservative principles and allegiances,” to say nothing of the fact that they have been supported by Miami Congressional representatives and paid for by Administrations and Congresses of both parties.

If the policy is a tangled mess, it’s a bipartisan mess, and it’s one that could not have come into being without the support of Miami’s representatives.

As for resentment, de Salas claims that Cuban immigrants cost too much in government benefits, their “demographic effects will overwhelm South Florida’s low-wage service-oriented labor market,” they will “strangulate” South Florida transportation, and aggravate unemployment.

He says not a word about immigrants’ contributions to the U.S. economy.

He doesn’t match Benjamin Franklin’s famous denunciation of German immigrants in the 18^th century – “Not being used to Liberty, they know not how to make a modest use of it” – but de Salas writes this:

“A political bonus for Havana will be the influential role of post-Soviet Cuban immigrant voters in Florida who may turn out in even larger numbers for Obama and the Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 elections after a seismic shift to the left among Cuban-American voters in November 2008, when 47 percent of the Cuban electorate in Florida voted for Obama. In so doing Castro’s own rebellious ‘children of the Revolution’ may paradoxically constitute a highly influential constituency in U.S. presidential politics which, while furthering their own collective self-interest in traveling freely and remitting financial resources to relatives in Cuba, will also serve Havana’s purposes by bolstering prospects for the unilateral lifting of the U.S. embargo and normalization of relations before the end of Obama’s expected second term in office, which Cuba will do everything possible to support.”

The paper’s sense of alarm is driven by the contention that President Obama’s policies will cause higher levels of Cuban immigration.

More will come, the argument goes, because they know their visits home will not be restricted. To the contrary, one could speculate that fewer will come because under the Obama policies, Cubans will feel less isolated from their family members abroad and will receive more economic support from them.

This paper is one researcher’s opinion, so it probably says little about the future of an immigration policy that has been settled for years. But it draws a sharp line between earlier generations of exiles and more recent immigrants, and its message to newcomers from the island is pretty clear: Not only do we not agree with you, we don’t want to see you here.