Too Embedded to End!
On January 12th, 2017 -- in the closing days of his eight-year administration -- President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order that ended, at least temporarily, America's Cuba-only Wet Foot-Dry Foot law that was one of many mandated by the U. S. Congress to appease the most extreme elements of America's counter-revolutionary factions. As with all easily passed Cuban laws in the U. S. Congress, the Wet-Dry policy was designed to hurt Revolutionary Cuba while also further empowering and/or enriching Cuban-Americans. Wet-Dry for years has been a major incentive for Cubans to defect to the U. S. and, unlike all other would-be immigrants, Cubans were immediately home-free the moment their foot touched U. S. soil, complete with financial and other benefits. Like much of America's Cuban policy since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, U. S. laws seeking to hurt Cubans on the island also discriminated wildly in favor of Cubans who defect to the U. S. Prior to Obama's presidency -- the sainted U. S. democracy had never seriously intervened nor had intimidated, uncaring or uninterested U. S. citizens. President Obama's fervent effort to normalize relations with Cuba bravely defied Congress and the counter-revolutionaries. Obama, among many other things, reopened embassies in Havana and Washington for the first time since 1961; allowed commercial airplane and cruise ship traffic to and from Cuba for the first time since 1962; and otherwise sliced deeply into the extremely punitive economic embargo of Cuba that had existed for over half-a-century. The Jan. 12-2017 Wet-Dry Foot decision was Obama's final effort at instilling a modicum of democracy into America's extremely discriminatory Cuban policy, one that in Oct.-2016 received a 191-to-0 condemnation in the United Nations. But the counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans merely awaited Obama's departure from the White House on Jan. 20-2017. Since then, schemes to erase Obama's sane, patriotic overtures regarding Cuba have been in the works and will earnestly and endlessly continue.
Yesterday -- Feb. 9-2017 -- the Miami Herald blared this major headline: "U. S. Detains 172 Cuban Migrants Following End of Wet Foot-Dry Foot Policy." The article indicated the 172 Cubans were being held at an undisclosed location while their fate was being decided, along with thousands of other Cubans still trying to enter the U. S. despite the Obama-orchestrated cancellation, at least for the moment, of Wet Foot-Dry Foot. The EFE photo above shows some of the thousands of Cubans temporarily stuck south of the U.S.-Mexican border being fed in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, which is just across the Rio Grande River from Laredo, Texas. Mexico and other nations are fed-up with dealing with the trafficking of Cuban migrants.
The photo above is courtesy of Carl Juste/Miami Herald/AP and it shows a plane-load of Cuban doctors arriving this week at Miami International Airport. That's Dr. Carlos Amigo upfront in the leather jacket. On January 12-2017 when President Obama ended Wet Foot-Dry Foot, he also ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole, another U. S. law enacted by the George W. Bush presidency in 2006 to hurt Cuba and to help the counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans. Cuba has thousands of medical personnel working in the poorest areas of many countries, including Venezuela, Brazil, Haiti, etc. Like many other Bush dynasty-inspired Cuban laws, the Medical Parole ruling encouraged and rewarded those Cubans to defect to the U. S. where, like with the Wet Foot-Dry Foot law, they would receive instant and very special privileges unavailable to all other would-be immigrants. But the above plane-load of Cuban doctors arriving in Miami, along with other similar arrivals this week, are being allowed because they supposedly defected prior to Jan. 12-2017 when President Obama ended both Wet Foot-Dry Foot and the Medical Paroles. So, the Wet Foot-Dry Foot Cubans stuck just across the U. S. border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, as well as Medical Parolees arriving by the plane-loads in Miami this week are off-shoots of the Bush-to-Obama-to-Trump U. S. presidential transitions. Obama's historic Democratic two-term administration was sandwiched between Republican administrations that have been or will be collaborative beneficiaries of what amounts to a sub-government of rich and powerful counter-revolutionary Cuban-Americans safely and permanently ensconced within the bowels of the proud United States democracy, now and in perpetuity.
Meanwhile, the U. S. Coast Guard ships and airplanes -- like those above -- remain diligent in the Florida Straits trying to intercept Cubans enticed to Florida but the expensive success of such missions has merely created higher prices from human traffickers who now emphasize the long, cumbersome and dangerous air-land route to South and Central America and then to the Mexican-American border.
And meanwhile in Cuba, American flags fly peacefully and serenely beside Cuban flags as Cubans on the island are hopeful that President Obama's legacy prevails in its sane depiction of U.S.-Cuban relations.
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