Another Elian?

The elements are all there in this Herald report: the child is in the United States, the mother deceased, the father in Cuba and described in the press as the mother’s husband, he wants custody and a Miami relative has it temporarily. One difference is that the child, born in the United States, can become a U.S. citizen by birth and a Cuban citizen by parentage. Another difference may be that the father would rather live here than there; from the Herald story, it seems that a visa application was in the works.

The Elian case turned into a political battle, but what mattered in the end was the principle – which the U.S. government asserts all around the world when American parents are separated from their kids – that if a minor child has one fit parent, then parent and child should be united.

We’ll see how this one turns out.