Lift The 50 Year Cuban Embargo, It only Hurts Americans!

Mona Charen: U.S.-Cuba policy: A 50-year failure?   By: Mona Charen Examiner Columnist  July 11, 2010       Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/U_S_-Cuba-policy_-A-50-year-failure_-98122959.html#ixzz0tWDO88jH

Cuba is a last redoubt of communism. Because Fidel Castro clings to life and to power, a veil still covers the island. Castro’s crimes have scarcely begun to be revealed as he dodders toward a comfortable death in his bed. But enough, more than enough, is known. Between 1959 and the present, more than 100,000 Cubans have suffered in Castro’s prisons and camps (some just for homosexuals). An estimated 17,000 were shot. Two million fled. Another 100,000 died attempting to escape.

What happened to Orlando Zapata is a terrible shame, there have been many others who have had the same fate. Fidel Castro has done this since 1959.  Che Guevara who was  his executioner, has many followers and many admires today all around the world and in our university campuses as well,  Obama ‘s own election campaign offices all across the country had posters of  Che hanging on their walls. The Obama idiots who champion Cuba’s health care system are clueless to the realities of Cuba and its citizens as well as many of those on the Right.

Now Congress seems poised to lift all travel bans on Cuba and provide a tourism boon to the regime. A broad spectrum of Americans approves the legislation, including Republicans and Democrats, farmers and business interests. Fine. It may serve the interests of freedom at this point to permit trade with Cuba (though one suspects that the Chamber of Commerce is interested in the business angle). What is galling is to hear one and all describe the 50-year embargo as a “failed policy.”

The embargo hasn’t done anything to prevent Fidel Castro from maintaining control over Cuba nor has it made the people of the island turn against Castro, on the contrary, what it has done is made the Cubans born under his Dictatorship learn how to play the system!  You may ask, how so?  Well let me tell you, contrary to what the Miami Cuban politicians, U.S. Congressman  Lincoln & Mario Diaz Balart or Congresswoman Illeana Ros Lehtinen may say, the truth is that the majority of Cubans that make it to our shores these days, could care less about the U.S. and our ways of life.

The wet-foot, dry-foot policy is absurd. You have Republicans who for the most part are always talking against illegal immigration coming from South of the border, of the “Mexicans”  kind as a bad thing, but why don’t they mention what goes on here in S. Florida?   Could it be because they are pandering to the first wave of  Cubans that came to the U.S. in  the late 5o’ to early  60’s , who by and large are Conservatives and registered Republicans?  As oppose to many that came during  Mariel and those making it to our shores today who are mostly registered Democrats and who voted for Obama? The Cubans of the 50’s & 60’s know the truth, it’s always those who are benefiting  from the Embargo who say otherwise!

The truth is that, after the Mariel Boat Lift in 1980, the new wave of Cubans coming from the island started to change. we all thought that the “Marielito’s were bad, which of course they weren’t all bad, but Castro did manage to empty his prisons of  those who were  criminals and mentally ill. Once they made it to our shores they were constantly in the news for many different types of crimes. Remember  the movie “Scarface” played by Al Pacino? That movie was a very accurate  portrait of how it was  during the early 80’s here in S.Florida.  Guess what?  These people who got the nickname of   “Marielitos” are babies in crime compared to those that now make it to our shores.

This new generation of Cubans born under Castro, for the most part are atheist, and those that have a religion , for the most part practice the pagan Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria. Others mix it with some form of distorted Catholicism.  They could careless about America, they bad mouth and complain about how hard they have to work here in the U.S, and how much better they had it Cuba.  By the way they love Castro.

Everything that we have been told about their way of life and them not being able to own property, according to them is not true. They have a scam for that also, as well as for when they make it to our shores and make claims that they where teachers in Cuba. We have some weird law that allows them to be able to take some exam and teach in our public schools without ever having to go to school here!

This is not to say that they are all this way, but a great majority of them are, and unfortunately for me I had the great displeasure of finding out for myself  the hard way.  Once here they continue to do what they did in Cuba, they steal anything and everything imaginable.  Containers  full of merchandise are a usual target for them as well as stealing gasoline and selling them on the black market. They are into all types of fraud, Medicare, Medicaid, insurance, stolen vehicles, drug dealing, and in the business of smuggling other Cubans from the island for $10,000.00 a head!

While you and I were paying $4.00 a gallon for gas a few years back, they were getting gas allowance from Work force Innovation, the unemployment office. These offices here in S. Florida are pretty much set up to serve them.  Any scam that you can imagine they are all ready doing them. One thing , you do have to give them credit for is their creativity  and in a sense they do  have that “capitalist pig mentality” of the “too big to fail”  that Castro always accuses us American of having.

In what sense did it fail? We declined to help or support a criminal regime in any way. Yes, Castro claimed that his island’s persistent and desperate poverty was due to the embargo, but so what? Anyone with eyes could see that Castro traded freely with Canada, Mexico, Latin America, Europe, Russia, China, and virtually everyone else. His special relationship with the USSR and later Venezuela is all that kept Cubans from starving like their ideological brothers in North Korea.

The day is coming when the true scope of Castro’s reign of terror will be fully revealed. Perhaps then we will take some grim satisfaction in having attempted, however unsuccessfully, to strangle the beast.

Well it has failed, because Castro is still in power, those who are given special status under the Cuban Adjustment Act, are not political refugees, they are immigrants!  The real  political refugees now on the island, usually die in Castro’s prisons!

The early Cubans that have been here 40 to 50 years never visited the island, they left everything behind when Castro took power.  They vowed never to return until they had a free Cuba once again. Not so with those that came during the 80’s and those making it to our shore or those that win the  lottery that was set up to allow a certain amount of Cubans to enter into the U.S. legally each year that come by plane.

After they have been here for a year and have all their papers in orders, they usually take off  to Cuba to celebrate  for  what they call “noche buena” or Christmas Eve, and stay there until after the new year. This was pretty much the norm until Bush ended it.  Now they are beginning to travel once again, even though they never really did stop completely, they would fly to the Dominican Republic, or Jamaica and take a plane from there to Cuba,  they would pay someone off and it was business as usual.

Last question for you, if you were just released from a prison, would you go back to visit?  In a sense that’s what they do, supposedly we are told that people in Cuba live in great fear like if they were living in a prison.  So I ask, “if  it’s so bad, why do they go back”?  The embargo has been a failure! Fidel Castro has proved to be a better chess player than all the American presidents combined since he has been in power!

The only people who suffer like always are the law-abiding Americans who play by the rules and are not allowed to travel to Cuba! Why should I as an American be denied to travel to where ever I so wish to go? While allowing those who we give a special privilege to enter our country the right to visit?

The Cubans that just get here, get to go back as tourist, going to the top beach resorts that are tailor-made for the idiots  tourist from all over the world who like themselves are contributing to keeping Castro in power for the last 50 years and who the likes of Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Danny Glover, Benecio Del Toro, and the Black Congressional Caucus so much applaud and defend Castro for all the so-called good that he has done for the Cuban people whose clock stop ticking in 1959!

We have relations with Communist China, Russia, & Vietnam, this is a FAILED policy because our politicians have never been serious to ridding themselves of  Castro.  Remember the “Bay Of Pig”?  The Republicans just played lip service to the Miami Cubans to get their vote and  never did anything to get rid of Castro! Enough with all of this. Normalize relations with Cuba, end the wet-foot dry-foot nonsense and the Cuban Adjustment Act. Once we do that, then we can start treating them the same way we do to all who just want to reap the fruits of our great land while never assimilating to our customs and culture!