Today is the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Adjustment Act, a Cold War relic which gives green cards to all Cuban illegal immigrants who make it to our shores, whether or not they have a case for political asylum. The 25th anniversary of the dissolution of the Soviet Empire is coming up in a few weeks, meaning that the Cuban Adjustment Act has outlived its rationale by a generation, and counting.
As I wrote earlier this year, illegal immigration from Cuba is growing rapidly. These migrants don’t even pretend to be refugees escaping Castro; they come for work, to join relatives, to send money home, and, in many cases, to sign up for welfare and then return to Cuba (their relatives cash the checks and send them the money).
Cuba is certainly not a democracy, but it’s no longer a Monroe Doctrine-defying outpost of a hostile foreign empire, either. Heck, it’s not even really totalitarian any more, having evolved into an authoritarian gangster state, like so many others in the Third World. We’ve sent back large numbers of Cuban illegals (those caught at sea are admitted only if they can make a plausible claim for asylum) and they’re not confined to camps, North Korea-style; some, in fact, keep trying to get here, like migrants from any other poor, decrepit country.
You’d think Obama – Castro fan that he is, like the rest of his leftist ilk – would be eager to change the law and take away the stigma on the Cuban regime that it represents. But that would mean 50,000 fewer immigrants this year, and there’s nothing more important that increasing immigration. (And it doesn’t hurt that new Cuban arrivals skew Democrat.)
It’s time we declare victory in the Cold War and retire this anachronism. Illegal aliens from Zimbabwe or Turkmenistan don’t automatically get to stay – why should Cubans?