It's not something that tends to come up in our daily conversations, but a quick
search of the blog shows that I have mentioned a few times that I grew up in
Miami. In particular, my folks moved to Miami from New York City when I
was three. It was 1957. We lived in SW Miami from age four to nine and then in
NW Miami from then to a year after I graduated high school. After that I lived in
south Florida, first Ft. Lauderdale and then Boca Raton, for another 8 years
before moving here to Central Florida in 1982.
I say that because living in that part of Florida in those years
means that I grew up with a lot of friends whose families had fled Cuba.
A few were very close friends. It was routine, regular life to see TV
news stories of people making it across the Florida straits and making it to
land in the most flimsy vessels imaginable. Everyone knew of vessels and
family friends who didn't make it; whose boats went down along the way.
Once I was grown up and making a decent salary, I was able to fish saltwater
from a boat and not just piers and bridges. I met people who had run into these
floating acts of desperation and called the Coast Guard to help, staying with
the floats until the cutter arrived. There was a saying that I heard
that I'll never forget: the sharks are well fed in the Florida Straits. A lot of people became shark food trying to escape Castro.
Somewhere along the way, I had drummed into my head that if the Coast Guard found people offshore, they were not obligated to bring them ashore, but if someone got into shallow enough water that they could stand in and touch bottom, that was the US and they were granted asylum. Yes, they ordinarily were sent to Customs and Immigration detention centers, but that was essentially a formality. And, yes, it's a special dispensation for Cubans, originally aimed at how to treat those found walking into cities in the Keys or South Florida.
This is all lead in to the story that yesterday
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
delivered a message to Cubans (and Haitians) who might be tempted to make the
crossing to Florida to escape the hellholes they're living in. He told
them not to try it. Don't come because we'll find you offshore and we'll
send you back. Secretary Mayorkas is a Cuban refugee himself. Is he trying to prevent another flood of boats or is he trying to keep Cubans out of the country?
“DHS is working with our partners to support the Haitian and Cuban people. The Coast Guard along with our state, local, and federal partners are monitoring any activity that may indicate increases in unsafe and irregular maritime migration in the Florida straits, including unpermitted vessel departures from Florida to Cuba.
The time is never right to attempt migration by sea. To those who risk their lives doing so, this risk is not worth taking. Allow me to be clear, if you take to the sea you will not come to the United States,” he said.
The Florida Straits are a hostile place. It's all deep; off the western end of the keys, closer to Cuba, it's 1500 feet deep; farther north, east of the keys it's 500 to 800 feet deep. The straits carry the bulk of the water in the Gulf stream north along Florida's east coast. There is some additional flow west out of the Caribbean that joins and flows north with it. I recall in the late '70s or maybe 1980 that Haitians would make it west along the northern side of their country and then Cuba before being swept north. Once off the Florida coast, they'd try to beach themselves on the east coast.
I'd hate to see Cubans and Haitians trying to make the trip, but I wouldn't threaten them with not getting into Florida. Rather, I'd get the Coast Guard to rescue them and bring them to the US. And Secretary Mayorkas had better know that he's breaking the law if he deports anyone who makes it to water they can stand up in.
If you want to learn more and understand what the subjugation of the Cuban people is like, let me point you to Babalu Blog, fourth from the top of my links column. Or start here.
I find the situation reprehensible. They want to block Cubans who might vote Republican and embrace Central Americans who might be persuaded to become lifelong democrats.
ReplyDeleteWhat LL said. The FedGov goes out of its way to help the coyotes and drug smugglers and child traffickers in the Southwest. But actual political refugees?
ReplyDeleteShades of the Fall of Saigon. How many South Vietnamese escaped on/in/with ridiculously flimsy craft and were denied, initially, any chance of safety in the USA?
Am waiting for some of the more... stroppy Cubans in the Miami area to, well, do what they did to the socialists in Miami back in the late 50's/early 60's. My dad, who visited the area frequently while doing Range Tracking and Instrumentation Ships for the space program, said you could tell when a socialist got too mouthy in Miami. As their house would blow up. Especially after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, lotta retribution from family members to anyone who looked remotely pro-Castro/pro-CHE!.
Flashbacks to Janet Reno and the Elian catastrophe.
The FedGov goes out of its way to help the coyotes and drug smugglers and child traffickers in the Southwest. But actual political refugees?
DeleteI bet that the FedGov helping the coyotes and drug smugglers means people in the Den of Criminals are getting healthy kickbacks from the cartels. Or getting their choice of young pedo targets. Or both.
I fully expect Putin or Xi to step in to help the regime maintain power in Cuba. After they watch us for while to ensure that we're not going to do anything to help.
Think of it as an indicator. If we're not going to help people literally on our doorstep, what are the chances we'll help Taiwan when they get rolled over?
I'd tend to allow Cubans a bit more slack in coming here than 99% of the others who come here. Every single Cuban I've met and known was a good person. Industrious, hard working, and freedom loving.
ReplyDeleteCUBA LIBRE!
Cubans, maybe. Haitians, definitely not. We have more than enough of them here now. They ruined their own country, and don't act any different after they step foot on the magic dirt.
ReplyDeleteWet Foot, Dry Foot policy was ended by President Obama in 2017. All illegal immigrants from Cuba are subject to deportation now.
ReplyDeleteI have spoken with a few Coasties about this issue over the years. Haitians tend to get the more harsh treatment, as there is frequently violence as part of any interaction at sea.
ReplyDeleteI had the good fortune to do the final evaluation on a new captain in my company, who had come to oversee a new shipping contract in the lesser Antilles. We spent a month running the boat around the Caribbean, getting to know the ports, the charterer, and each other. The guy in question had come over to Miami on a raft at age 12 from Cuba, after his mother ran out of cats (the backup food source, apparently, in Cuba) to feed her children during a particularly hard few months when food got scarce.
Obama killed the Wet Foot/ Dry Foot protocol, but I know firsthand that both merchant mariners AND Coast Guard occasionally 'miss' rafts that are spotted at close range. Awful hard to distinguish between a homemade raft and a center console with a fishing party going on. Hmmm. Anyone can make that mistake.
Also "hmmm. Looks like floating debris. Nothing to see, don't you agree?"
I get the impression you might be the person to ask this, if you happen to come back by.
DeleteWikipedia (a questionable source for anything that could possibly have a political interpretation) says "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" was a 1995 Bill Clinton admin interpretation of a 1966 law. ISTRC that I heard about that "if you can stand in the water and breathe" idea around the mid-70s, or possibly during the Mariel boat lift in '80, which goes with the idea of a '66 law.
Was that pretty much how it worked before Clinton? In other words, was Obama getting rid of that policy is meaningless because all they did was formalize how everyone was working anyway?