THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, April 25, 1995 TAG: 9504250271
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Thousands of Cuban refugees camped at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station would get their long-sought chance to move to America under a novel plan advanced by a senior U.S. military official.
Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan, the Norfolk-based head of the U.S. Atlantic Command, wants Cubans at the base to be offered a chance to enlist in America's armed forces. The idea has been rejected once by the Pentagon, but Sheehan is pressing to have it reconsidered.
``The facts do not support your position,'' Sheehan wrote in an April 10 memo, appealing the rejection of his plan by Assistant Secretary of Defense Frederick F.Y. Pang.
``I have not asked that migrants be enlisted under standards that are different from either U.S. citizens from other non-U.S. citizens we have enlisted in the past . . .'' the memo said.
Sheehan was out of the country and unavailable for comment Monday. His memo, however, casts the enlistment option as ``vital toward ensuring continued stability in the migrant camp . . .''
In at least one Capitol Hill appearance this spring, Sheehan warned of the possibility of disturbances at Guantanamo if a solution to the refugee problem isn't found soon.
The growth of the migrant camps has disturbed Navy operations in Guantanamo, which the United States controls under a long-term lease that predates Communist rule on the island nation. The service announced last week that it will transfer a fleet training center from Guantanamo to Mayport, Fla., citing uncertainties about the base's future in light of the migrant situation.
As the overall operational commander of American forces in the Atlantic, Sheehan is responsible for the 23,000 Cubans living in tent cities at the Guantanamo compound. Though Congress recently provided additional funds to pay for various refugee operations, the Guantanamo camps are costing Sheehan's command about $20 million amonth.
Sheehan estimated that almost 12,700 of the Cubans at Guantanamo are qualified by age to serve in the U.S. military. It is impossible to say how many of them would meet the military's other requirements, or would want to enlist, but Sheehan noted that 7,100 of the Cubans are high school graduates, 1,150 have completed college and 250 have advanced degrees.
Sheehan noted that in 1975, at the end of the war in Vietnam, the United States offered Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees the opportunity to enlist if they met certain criteria. The offer was made to refugees at camps within the United States, and of 20,000 males of enlistment age - no records apparently were kept on women - 6,000 to 8,000 were qualified for enlistment, Sheehan said.
The U.S. military also routinely enlists non-U.S. citizens living in the country as resident aliens. Sheehan's memo said that 71,729 of them were accepted into the services from 1984 to 1994.
In his memo, Sheehan makes a pitch for the enlistment plan that suggests it would help ease the transition in the event Fidel Castro leaves power. Castro has held power since winning a revolution in 1959, but his rule is threatened by economic woes blamed in part on the fall of his patron, the Soviet Union.
``. . . there will be a very real military need for (Cuban) talent should Cuba undergo a change of government,'' Sheehan wrote, ``much like Haitian service members in the U.S. services now serving in Haiti.''
The Cubans at Guantanamo were taken there last summer by Navy and Coast Guard ships which had intercepted their boats and rafts as they attempted to flee to Florida and the East Coast.
The Clinton administration has said the migrants must return home and apply for admission to the United States there, but has quietly permitted several thousand - families with minor children - to enter the country directly in recent months. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan is responsible for the 23,000 Cubans
living in tent cities at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. The refugee
camps are costing Sheehan's command about $20 million er month.
KEYWORDS: CUBAN REFUGEES GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION by CNB