With about a week left in office, President Obama has finally cracked down on immigration: against Cubans. Escapees from our Communist neighbor have long been given automatic legal immigrant status once they arrive on our shores. But no more. Now they will be returned for punishment.
The Obama administration says that now, in light of our “normalized relations” with Cuba, Cuban refugees will be treated like any other immigrants. Except other immigrants are allowed to enter illegally with impunity and they are hardly ever returned to their homelands. Yes, Fidel Castro is dead, but his brother Raul, now in charge, is also said to be a merciless dictator. Cubans fleeing Communism tend to be freedom-loving types who–like the families of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz–tend to become conservative Republicans. Could this have anything to do with this tightly-focused crackdown? Surely not.
From News from The Associated Press:
President Barack Obama announced Thursday he is ending a longstanding immigration policy that allows any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil to stay and become a legal resident.
The repeal of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy is effective immediately. 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.
“Effective immediately, Cuban nationals who attempt to enter the United States illegally and do not qualify for humanitarian relief will be subject to removal, consistent with U.S. law and enforcement priorities,” Obama said in a statement. “By taking this step, we are treating Cuban migrants the same way we treat migrants from other countries. The Cuban government has agreed to accept the return of Cuban nationals who have been ordered removed, just as it has been accepting the return of migrants interdicted at sea.”
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Photo, Carnival Liberty Cuban Refugees by Andrew Smith (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
With about a week left in office, President Obama has finally cracked down on immigration: against Cubans. Escapees from our Communist neighbor have long been given automatic legal immigrant status once they arrive on our shores. But no more. Now they will be returned for punishment.
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