Obama’s jerk move at the end of his presidency: Slamming the door on Cuban refugees

Michael Totten in World Affairs Journal:

The United States Slams the Door on Cuban Refugees

One of Barack Obama’s last acts as president was a total jerk move, and Donald Trump approves of it.

Our outgoing president ended two long-standing policies that helped Cuban refugees flee the oppressive Castro regime and find safe harbor and the opportunity to live free and productive lives in the United States.

First, the “wet feet, dry feet” policy, a modified version of the Cuban Adjustment Act passed in 1966, granted political asylum to Cuban citizens who managed to reach American soil. Obama killed it with a stroke of his pen. Any would-be Cuban refugee who arrives on American shores will now be deported back to Castro’s police state.

Obama also ended the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, passed in 2006 during the Bush Administration, which allowed Cuban doctors to defect to the United States through any American Embassy in the world.

The Castro regime hated these policies. Granting asylum to Cubans lucky enough to reach the United States undermined the legitimacy of the dictatorship and put the lie to its propaganda. Any government that drives its own citizens into the ocean to escape has failed catastrophically.

Cuban doctors could defect even more easily. They didn’t have to come all the way to the United States to find shelter. Just reaching one of our embassies was enough, and it happened routinely because Havana exported doctors all over the world to countries that desperately needed medical help. At a glance, Cuba’s overseas doctor program seems like a wonderful thing that only a mean and cold-hearted grouch would ever complain about, but look closer.

Cuba has a dire shortage of medical supplies and personnel at home. When I visited a couple of years ago, I had to bring my own anti-biotics, my own bandages, my own gauze, my own iodine, and other basic medical supplies in case I needed them while I was there because they are not available on the island.

Doctors are hardly available in Cuba anymore either because the government has exported so many of them. A brave soul risked imprisonment a couple of years ago and protested by hanging a sign from his crumbling balcony that read, “Do I have to go to Venezuela for my headache?” Cuban citizens may not have to pay for their healthcare, but they’re languishing in a medical hell.

Cuba doesn’t export doctors because it wants to help sick people in poor countries. It exports doctors because it needs money. Foreign governments pay millions of dollars for Cuban medical services, but nearly 100 percent of it goes not to the doctors who do the actual work but instead to the regime in Havana. The word exploited isn’t strong enough to describe how these people are treated. The Castro regime is basically selling slaves.

And don’t assume for a moment that the Castros have been using the money they “earn” from exploiting these doctors for the welfare of Cuba’s people. The government-imposed Maximum Wage is still only 20 dollars a month, yet ten years ago Fidel Castro’s net worth was estimated at 900 million dollars. For all we know, he was richer than Donald Trump by the time he died, and he got that money not by building anything but by ruling Cuba as if it were a 17th century plantation.

So until now, the United States did virtually everything it could to give Cuba’s suffering people a way out. It’s who we are and it’s what we do.

At least it was who we were and what we did before Barack Obama and Donald Trump.

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