THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, August 20, 1994 TAG: 9408200242
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DANIEL WILLIAMS, THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
For 30 years, it has been been unthinkable to refuse asylum to refugees from Cuba who crossed the Straits of Florida.
But guaranteed asylum for Cubans has been swept away by an array of factors that have drowned out Cold War concerns: fear within the Clinton administration of a politically disastrous mass exodus into Florida; a political need to treat Cubans the same as Haitians also fleeing a dictatorship; and the intensification of negative attitudes nationally toward immigration.
Friday, Clinton announced his decision in jarring language: He labeled the flight of refugees from Cuba ``illegal,'' a word no one would have used in the past to describe those fleeing hard-line countries like Cuba that were part of the Soviet bloc.
In a stroke, Clinton transformed Cubans into the legal equivalent of Haitians, in terms of their status as would-be immigrants. Like Haitians, Cuban boat people will no longer be granted automatic entry to the United States. If picked up at sea, their fate is ironic: They will be returned to the Cuba, at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, without a chance of migration to Florida.
The administration is betting that a surge of raft and boat departures from Cuba will be nipped early as word spreads in Cuba that rescue at sea means indefinite confinement. Officials bank on a repeat of the recent Haitian experience, in which boat people stopped leaving Haiti when told they would be ferried to Guantanamo and not the United States.
One possible hitch: Cubans simply may not believe that the United States would keep them in perpetual detention in Guantanamo, or ship them off to other countries, and so continue to flee.
The immediate stimulus for the policy change was worry that Florida would be overwhelmed by a refugee wave - a possibility that held serious political dangers. Losing control of U.S. borders would be a liability for any president. Jimmy Carter's inability to contain the 1980 Mariel boat lift of Cubans contributed to his defeat by Ronald Reagan. Clinton, whose foreign policy reputation is poor, would be doubly vulnerable to criticism.
``First off, it was clear that the outflows were rising, and clearly Castro was facilitating it,'' said a State Department official. ``We had to take steps to stop it.''
During discussions leading up to the change, administration officials spoke of Cubans much the way they refer to refugees from other impoverished countries, State Department officials said. The Cubans come from an overpopulated sugar republic, where prospects for work are dim. Most Cuban refugees have not been directly persecuted for political reasons, even if the regime itself is repressive overall.
The Haitian issue played into this change in the official image of Cubans. Could Haitians, generally regarded as economic refugees, be kept out if Cubans continued to be welcomed? Pro-Haitian activists and politicians, mostly from the Democratic party's liberal wing, had been pressing for equal treatment for Haitians. The answer to the quandary was to keep both groups out. MEMO: Related story on page A10.
ILLUSTRATION: Color map
1. Refugees headed for Florida will be stopped by the Coast Guard,
2. moved to the Navy dock-landing ship Whidbey Island and shipped to
the other side of Cuba. 3. The U.S. military is setting up camps for
them at Guantanamo.
KEYWORDS: CUBAN REFUGEES IMMIGRATION POLICY ASYLUM by CNB