TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=94TT1152> <title> Aug. 29, 1994: Immigration:Dire Straits </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994 Aug. 29, 1994 Nuclear Terror for Sale </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> IMMIGRATION, Page 28 Dire Straits </hdr> <body> As Castro sets refugees adrift toward Florida, Clinton decides to undo a decades-old policy and interdict fleeing Cubans at sea By Nancy R. Gibbs--Reported by Cathy Booth/Miami, Nina Burleigh and J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Mike Smith/Key West Looking for freedom and food, the Cuban refugees who hauled themselves desperately onto Floridian shores last week told wild, hungry stories of how fellow countrymen tried to take advantage of the food shortage. They talked of condoms melted on top of pizzas and sold to the unsuspecting; of rag mops left in water to soften, then dried, cut up and served with egg on a sandwich; of apples that cost a month's wages. "We are like lambs," says Elvis Sierra Laborit, a bakery worker from Havana, who is not a rebellious man. "We will be eating grass soon." Even he realized it was time to go. All week long, U.S. officials tried their best to discourage Cubans from setting out on the treacherous 90-mile crossing to Florida. But it was clear that American threats stood little chance of prevailing over Cuba's hungers. By the time President Clinton went on television to reverse nearly 30 years of Cuban policy, he was characterizing the exodus as "a cold-blooded attempt to maintain the Castro grip on Cuba." Unwilling to be blackmailed by the threat of a humanitarian disaster, Clinton revoked the special status Cuban refugees have long enjoyed, which guarantees them asylum if they reach U.S. shores. Instead of the preferential treatment that has allowed Cubans to bypass the asylum process, the President announced on Friday that refugees trying to make it to the U.S. will now face indefinite detention while their cases are reviewed by immigration officials. By Saturday Clinton had imposed other stringencies on Cuba, including new limits on charter flights and an increase in anti-Castro radio broadcasts. Most important, Clinton pledged to cut off cash transfers from Cuban Americans to their relatives on the island--gifts that have been estimated to total $500 million a year. Within hours of the announcement, Navy ships began collecting refugees intercepted by the Coast Guard and ferrying them to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. The people of the U.S. "do not want to see Cuba dictate our immigration policy," Clinton declared. "They do not want to see Mr. Castro export his political and economic problems to the United States. We tried it that way once," he said, referring to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which brought 125,000 refugees to America in five months. "It was wrong then, and it's wrong now, and I'm not going to let it happen again." Under the new detention plan, refugees would be held at Guantanamo or other "safe havens." The legal key to their status is the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, a cold war loophole designed to help Cubans living illegally in the U.S. become citizens. The act allows the Attorney General "in his discretion" to guarantee permanent residency to Cuban refugees, but only after they have been in the U.S. for one year. The wording of the statute and its 12-month grace period enables the Clinton Administration, in effect, to turn the act upside-down, justifying the withholding of special considerations previously granted to Cubans and, in the process, reversing policy without actually having changed the law. In an afternoon briefing, Attorney General Janet Reno made it clear how she intends to use her discretionary powers. "Anybody who enters illegally," she said, "may be detained. The odds of ending up in Guantanamo are going to be very, very great. The odds of ending up in the U.S. are going to be very, very small." Though the U.S. steps are designed to rob Castro of a safety vent to defuse unrest in his country, the number of Cubans taking to the sea did not immediately diminish in the wake of Clinton's pronouncements. On Friday, about 575 refugees arrived; Saturday brought another 861. Moreover, the President's stiffened economic sanctions will only increase the tensions that send Cubans dashing toward the beaches in the first place. At the same time, Castro's castaways must now swallow a humiliating demotion in status. The waning of superpower rivalry has weakened Cubans' claims to being fugitives from political oppression; instead they are now viewed simply as poor people trying to slip through the door to American prosperity--even as the U.S. anachronistically continues to treat Havana as it has since the late '50s and '60s: as a dangerous purveyor of subversion and Soviet expansionism. The pressures on Castro at home have forced the Cuban leader to play a risky game. Castro's goal, argues a State Department official, "is to force us to negotiate the embargo." By threatening to swamp South Florida with another wave of refugees, Castro was gambling he could wring concessions out of the U.S. without destroying his own regime in the process. "What he's always good at is flipping things so his problem becomes someone else's," says the official. "This is his last card. He knows this is the one thing he can do to get our attention and inflict some measure of cost on us." U.S. officials guess as many as 3 million of Cuba's 11 million citizens would flee if promised safe passage--an exodus that could be fatally humiliating to Castro but equally damaging to Clinton in Florida, an important re-election state. Having chided Castro for running a big prison, Clinton cannot very well tell him to keep the doors to the jail shut. But Floridians were adamant: they would not, could not bear the cost of absorbing a vast new population of exiles. Already blistered by criticism of his reversals on Haiti, Clinton needed a firm solution that would slow the flood of refugees but not ignore their suffering or antagonize the powerful Cuban-American community in Florida. Clinton enjoyed a certain amount of maneuvering room: there is no significant sentiment in Congress to open up immigration or lift the trade embargo on Cuba. "The solution is not for 100,000 Cubans to come to the U.S.," says New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, "but for one man to leave Cuba, and that is Fidel Castro." While some angry Cuban Americans took to the streets of Miami shouting, "Down with Clinton!" exile leaders like Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation, lobbied the White House to keep up the pressure. The truth is that even the exiles don't want another Mariel, fearing a mass emigration would buy Castro more time. "I'm really struck by the reaction of the Cuban Americans," says one Senate staff member. "It appears that they don't want to give Castro a safety valve." Some in Cuba, however, doubted the policy change would be any more of a deterrent than the sharks, the hunger, the stormy seas that refugees were already braving. In the Havana suburb of Miramar, the news that boat people would be detained did not deter a young Cuban who was hurrying to finish his raft. "I'll take my chances," he said. "They won't send us back." Actually, that is just what the state of Florida would like to do. Already reeling from the moral and physical pressure of Haitians desperate to come to its shores, Florida called on Washington to admit that the situation had all the makings of a crisis. Governor Lawton Chiles declared an "immigration state of emergency," allowing him to call out the National Guard to help rescue, shelter and screen refugees. He demanded that Washington help defray the costs of health care, social services and law enforcement for the newcomers, which he estimates will approach $1 billion this year. "All of us feel for rafters," Chiles said Saturday, "but Florida cannot stand another influx." They are young and old, peasants and professionals, pregnant women and children. They came in rafts made of ropes and inner tubes, catamarans built in living rooms, boats made from beds and old car engines. One young boy survived the journey after his parents gave him their only life jacket and handed him over to another boat--before they themselves disappeared beneath the waves. A group of rafters watched in horror as the limb of a fellow refugee floated by; he had gone crazy from hallucinations and had jumped into the ocean, only to be attacked by a shark. A group of 11 floated up onto the fine white sands of Hallandale beach on the roof of a bus, which they had saved their money for years to buy. When they finally saw lights after eight days at sea, "we didn't know it was Miami, but we knew it couldn't be Havana," says Jorge Luis Diaz, 29, "because there's no electricity there, and no lights." As they gratefully reunited with family members in Little Havana, Attorney General Reno was announcing the new U.S. detention policy. Unaware of their close call, they all had one goal in mind. "To work!" they yelled in chorus. The exodus follows nearly five years of increasing turmoil in Cuba after the fall of its Soviet patrons. Since 1989, imports have dropped from $8 billion to $2 billion. Last summer Castro eased a few restrictions. Possession of U.S. currency is no longer illegal, and some private employment is allowed. The timid reforms raised hopes for improved living standards. But a year later, with Castro blocking liberalization, and tensions erupting between the haves and the have-nots, refugees say hope has died. Ration books provide barely two weeks' worth of food. For the rest, families must rely on the black market, where 120 to 150 pesos, generally half a month's salary, buys only one U.S. dollar. "We had been waiting four or five months for soap. Everybody has got skin diseases, so we're taking baths with leaves now," says Elvis the bakery worker. The pressure has grown all summer as gas, cigarette and food prices continued to climb. Residents of the capital began riding the ferry across Havana Bay four or five times a day, hoping it would be hijacked to Key West. Other Cubans began to commandeer motorboats and tugboats, but the authorities gave chase and opened fire. On July 13 at least 32 people died on the tugboat Trece de Marzo after it was rammed and sunk by pursuing Cuban ships. Aug. 5 saw the largest antigovernment demonstrations since Castro came to power. Angered by the death of a policeman in a refugee hijacking in early August, Castro threatened to open the ports and unleash the population. "Castro appeared on national television and said military police would no longer patrol the waterfront," explained Eugenia Ventacourt, 44, a former executive secretary from Havana. Like hundreds of others, she crept down to the coast to see whether police were still patrolling. Before dawn on Sunday she and 10 others slipped away from a beach east of Havana. They were spotted by a Cuban coastal patrol boat 28 miles from the island, far beyond the coastal limits, but after circling their crudely built wooden craft, the soldiers let them proceed. Those who did brave the sea seem to have come away from the ordeal with a better understanding of the price of freedom. "I don't want to wake up from my dream," exclaimed Aylen Alvarez, 8, a pretty girl from Puente Grande Havana who arrived on Wednesday with her mother. "I want to eat the whole apple. I've never had one before. Can't I do that? Please?" </body> </article> </text>