Our Cruel And Counter-Productive Cuban Refugee Policy

Today the United States government returned 15 refugees from political oppression to the dictatorship from which they fled. (Here.) But few in our country will care because it's just Cubans being sent back to Fidel Castro's dictatorship.

Roughly, America's policy is to admit Cuban refugees who reach US soil but return those we intercept on the sea. The policy is designed to discourage Cubans from fleeing their country.

Our Cuban refugee policy is counter-productive to America's desire for Fidel Castro's government to fall. The Eastern European communist countries fell soon after the borders were wide open and refugees flooded out of their countries into their free European neighbors. When the people of a dicatatorship realize they can easily flee, they do, and the regime soon falls afterwards.

Rather than patrolling international waters to catch and return Cubans to Castro's prisons, we should be patrolling there to rescue refugees and bring them to the US. We should be encouraging the flight of as many Cubans as possible and we should be assisting them.

-tdr