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Twelve Cuban migrants attempt to cross the Florida Straights Wednesday, July 16, 2003 in a boat fashioned out of a 1951 Chevy pickup truck driving it within 40 miles of the United States before they were found by the U.S. Coast Guard and returned to Cuba. (AP Photo/U.S. Coast Guard, Gregory Wald)
I absolutely detest our Cuba policy. These men should be in Florida right now.
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The Cuban A-Team Returns
The makers of last year’s Chevy pickup boat have reportedly returned to open waters with another mechanical chimera: MIAMI (AP) — Two Cubans who tried to sail to Florida in a truck converted to a pontoon boat last year…
Link Unto Others…
Link Unto Others… Okay, Gerwitz. Thu it is. Thank you, Scott Ott of Scrappleface With headlines like “Survey: Many Germans Believe U.S. Sponsored Hitler” and “Uday’s Suicide May Violate International Law” and “Bill Clinton Declares California Residen…
Frank DiSalle
Does anybody know where I can find out more about this policy without slogging through Google or First.gov?
Moe Lane
God DAMN it, I am getting sick and tired of this. Aside from everything else – and there’s a lot of everything else – any group of people who can make a seaworthy raft out of a pickup truck and get it out to sea are precisely the sort of immigrants I -want- coming into this country.
They should be sitting in comfortable poolside chairs in Miami right now, sipping cold drinks and negotiating with movie studios…
Oliver
Yeah, but those black folks in Haiti should get sent right back, eh?
Stephen
No Oliver, Haitians, along with anyone else wanting to escape oppression and dictatorship should be encouraged to come here and stay here if they can. Here, anyone can grow and contribute. It happens all the time.
Moe Lane
Yeah, but those black folks in Haiti should get sent right back, eh?
Oliver, no matter how many straw men you throw out, I’m not going to click through to your site…
John Cole
Oliver- I say let everyone that legally wants to come over, and shoiuld Haiti be unfortunate enough to come under the rule of Castro, I say let em in. This is a big country, we have room for plenty more. I am willing to make an exception to legal immigration for Cubans- as I would for North Koreans, Iraqi’s, etc. They just aren’t next door.
And quit the race-baiting.
M. Scott Eiland
“And quit the race-baiting.”
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, John. Asking Oliver to stop race baiting would be like asking Gloria Allred to stop filing frivolous lawsuits.
Perry
Not only should they be in Florida, but with the creativity they showed with that “raft”, they should have simply dumped the oil drums as soon as they hit shore and cruised on up I-95!
Barney Gumble
Hey Oliver, congrats on getting in the Boston Globe today.
What is the “wet foot/dry foot” policy?
Clinton negotiated it with Castro during the raft flotillas of 1994 or so. Bush was all outraged about all the poor little Elians during the campaign, but of course has had 2 1/2 years to change the policy and hasn’t.
Emperor Misha I
I have to disagree respectfully with the last sentence of your post, blogdad.
Not that I don’t believe that those poor Cubans should’ve been kept here as refugees, which they are, but the REAL solution to the problem lies in stationing our Marines in Havana, roasting Fidel and his henchmens’ balls over a slow fire.
Emperor Misha I
And Holy Mother of G-d! I’m in agreement with Barney for once!
“Bush was all outraged about all the poor little Elians during the campaign, but of course has had 2 1/2 years to change the policy and hasn’t.”
Damn straight, Barney. For once, you nailed it!
Oliver
If you knew me rather than caricatured me, you would understand that I don’t race-bait. The policy difference between Cuba and Haiti is all race.
Dean
Oliver,
You mean if Haiti had a Communist government, we’d STILL refuse admittance to their refugees?
Also, I thought Cuba had a substantial black population. Are you suggesting that there are NO refugees from there of a darker complexion?
Here’s a thought experiment:
Imagine Haiti had a Communist government and Cuba had remained under Batista. You really think we’d oppose Haitian refugees and welcome Cubans?
roger
send em all back!!!! after dealing with ins for three years over my wife’s legal immigration all illegal immigrants should be rounded up and immediately deported. fuck em…if they want to come here do it legally…then they really prove how badly they want to come here…legal immi gratioin is a total bitch…
Sean Hackbarth
Oliver, last time I checked the Hernandez brothers were black and Cuban, and they live and work in the U.S. A difference between Haiti and Cuba is citizens of the latter aren’t allowed to leave. Haiti is an economic wreck where people are allowed to legally emmigrate while Cuba is a totalitarian state.
And I thought the White Man hated Browns as much as Blacks? Why would he then prefer Cuba over Haiti?
Wylie
Those dudes deserve a medal! (or at least a cold Budweiser)
But instead, they’re rotting in some hell-hole of a Cuban prison cell right now. But! They’re 100% literate! And have free health care! Huzzah!
And last I checked, there were quite a few black Cubans, who I wish were free with just as much fervor as I do for their lighter-skinned brethren. Haitians made their bed, let them lie in it. We’ve done way more than could reasonably be expected to help them get it together.
Frank DiSalle
Thanks for the info Barney… It figures Democrats would talk open borders, and then pull crap like that.
Stryker
If they had been driving a Ford, they might have made it. Cheap joke.
When I was in Gitmo during the big Haitian exodus, I didn’t really see any race-conscious selection going on. Obviously, there weren’t any light-skinned Haitians (they run the island, which I found out after deploying there for Operation Restore Corruption) among the refugees. From everything I heard and observed, the authorities were trying to figure out which ones were honest refugees and which ones were criminals kicked out of Haiti and put on those rafts by their government. Other factors were probably considered, of course, but I remember the “are they/aren’t they” bit being a big deal as well as whether any of them were true blue political asylum seekers instead of those just looking for a better deal. I thought most of them should’ve been let in considering that they were screwed no matter who was in power in their country, but they don’t let me get to decide those things.
I think Cuba did the same thing during the 90’s. They’d send their criminals over on boats to rid themselves of them. Kinda like the British and Australia.