Setting the record straight
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| Closing the door on Cuban victims of human trafficking. |
Florida Keys News
reported
on December 22, 2017 that "[f]or the second time in three months, Cuban
migrants made landfall in the Florida Keys this week." This blog
also documented Cubans trying to reach the United States in May of 2017. According to
Elena Toledo writing in the
PanAm Post
15,135 Cubans were declared “inadmissible” in the United States in 2017
and 14,037 Cubans were rejected from entering through Laredo, Texas
alone. According
to the Miami Herald, 15,410 Cubans entered the United States in fiscal year 2017.
These
draconian measures are the result of an
order issued by the Obama Administration one year ago today. The Office of the Press Secretary at The White House on January 12, 2017 released a "
Statement by the President on Cuban Immigration Policy"
that did two concrete things: further restricted the
Cuban Adjustment Act and ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program.
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| President Obama ended programs protecting Cubans to placate Castro |
The Obama administration secretly negotiated with the Castro
regime, and did not consult with Congress, in restricting the Cuban
Adjustment Act which is US law. This is the second time that it has
happened. From 1966 until 1995 The Cuban Adjustment meant that if a
Cuban touched US territorial waters the Coast Guard would pick them up
and take them to shore and they would obtain residency. Bill Clinton in
1995
reinterpreted the law to mean
that Cubans had to touch land (dry feet) or be deported if caught in
the water (wet feet). Now Obama has re-interpreted the law a step
further saying that he will deport all Cubans who arrive in the US
without a visa. This is a narrower interpretation of the law by the
Executive branch without consulting with Congress.
President Barack Obama
on January 12, 2017 also shut the door on Cuban
medical doctors, in third countries,
victims of trafficking. Months earlier the Obama Administration
politicized the
Trafficking in Persons Report of the State Department,
undermining its credibility.
This was done by the White House to placate long standing demands of
the Castro regime and to whitewash the dictatorship's terrible record on
human trafficking. Consider the following:
In 2006 the
case of Cuban workers forced to work 112 hours a week for 3
cents an hour in Curaçao made the news. Workers had been unpaid; their
compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the Curaçao Drydock
Company.
In 2008
The Miami Herald reported that "more than 31,000 Cuban health workers -- most of them doctors -- who
toil in 71 countries brought in $2.3 billion last year, ...,
more than any other industry, including tourism."
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| Medical doctors trafficked for the profit of the Castro regime. |
The Obama State Department's last
TIP report (2016) despite trying to
minimize the Cuban governments involvement in human trafficking
affirmed that "Cuba is a source and destination country for adults and children
subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Child sex trafficking and
child sex tourism occur within Cuba." Furthermore
reported on how the Castro regime "uses some high school students in rural areas to harvest
crops and does not pay them for their work but claims this work is not
coerced."
Not mentioned in either the 2015 or 2016 TIP reports are the killings of fleeing refugees in December of 2014 and April of 2015.
On December 16, 2014 the Cuban coastguard
ram and sank a boat with 32 refugees,
one of them,
Diosbel Díaz Bioto, was killed.
Yuriniesky Martínez Reina (age 28) was
shot in the back and killed by state security chief Miguel Angel Río
Seco Rodríguez
in the Martí municipality of Matanzas, Cuba on April 9, 2015 for peacefully trying to leave Cuba.
A group of young men were building a boat near Menéndez beach to
flee the island, when they were spotted trying to leave and
were shot at.
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| Yuriniesky Martínez Reina shot and killed on April 9, 2015 |
Kimberly A. McCabe in her book "
The Trafficking of Persons: National and International Responses" wrote
the following on Cuba and
human trafficking:
"Cuba is a source country for women and children trafficked for sexual
exploitation and forced child labor and has been identified as a
destination for sex tourism. Cuban adults and children are also
trafficked for forced labor in commercial agriculture, such as tobacco
farming. There are also reported cases of Cubans being trafficked to the
United States for debt bondage. Cuba's thriving sex trade caters to
thousands of tourists every year from Europe, Latin America, and North
America and involves not only the young boys and girls who are victims
of abuse but also the state-run hotel workers, cab drivers, and police
officers who may identify the commercial sex areas for those interested
in participating in sexual exploitation.
Months after the door was closed to Cuban doctors in third countries, to
placate the Castro regime, The New York Times in a September 29, 2017
article titled "
Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’" exposed the Castro regime's trafficking in medical professionals.
"In
a rare act of collective defiance, scores of Cuban doctors working
overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to
break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from
what one judge called a “form of slave labor.” Thousands of Cuban
doctors work abroad under contracts with the Cuban authorities.
Countries like
Brazil
pay the island’s Communist government millions of dollars every month
to provide the medical services, effectively making the doctors Cuba’s
most valuable export."
Closing the door on thousands of Cuban medical doctors and dooming them
to be exploited by a military dictatorship so that regime elites can cash in on
billions of dollars was a decision taken by the outgoing Obama
Administration
on January 12, 2017. It is important to remember and observe this lamentable statement by President Obama on Cuban migration one year later.
