A long history: Seeking safe harbor and U.S. territory

Posted on Sat, Feb. 04, 2006

JOURNAL ENTRY | INTERDICTION POLICY
A long history: Seeking safe harbor and U.S. territory

By SUSANA BARCIELA Editorial Board member
sbarciela@miamiherald.com

If hindsight is 20/20, it can also be short-term. Yet we ignore history
at our own peril. A policy protested today may have been supported and
welcomed when it was implemented. Take, for example, the government's
wet-foot, dry-foot policy on Cuban interdictions. The policy was
highlighted recently thanks to the Department of Homeland Security's
determination that an old bridge in the Florida Keys is not U.S.
territory. Such ludicrous logic resulted in 15 Cuban boat people being
deemed ''wet-foot'' and, thus, shipped back to Cuba. Landing on another
piling would have made them ''dry-foot'' and eligible to stay.

Protests about the Cuban-interdiction policy are not new. Yes, there is
much to criticize about the policy and how it is practiced. While many
of the current protesters blame the Clinton administration for the
reviled policy, few talk about its history. Many in South Florida forget
how the 1994 balsero crisis, which ultimately led to the wet-foot,
dry-foot policy, divided the local Cuban community. As the number of
Cuban boat arrivals mounted that summer, President Clinton responded to
then-Gov. Lawton Chiles' request and ordered the Cubans interdicted and
taken to Guantánamo Naval Base.

When Cuban exiles protested that this punished Cuban refugees and not
Castro, Mr. Clinton took the advice of Jorge Mas Canosa, the influential
Republican chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation:
Remittances and family visits to Cuba were halted altogether. But
interdictions continued.

Many Miami Cubans objected to the new measures, especially the
warehousing of Cuban refugees at Guantánamo. Yet others supported
interdiction. Few wanted a repeat of the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which
Castro sent criminals and mentally unstable people to our shores. Some
just didn't want the image of Cuban Miami to suffer as did after the
Mariel exodus.

But the model for Cuban interdictions came not from President Clinton
but from previous administrations that treated Haitians harshly as they
fled from armed civil conflict and political violence. In fact,
administrations of both parties have been mistreating Haitian refugees
since the first boatload arrived in 1963.

This history involves low points in U.S. efforts to keep out even
refugees with legitimate asylum claims. The Reagan administration began
the first Haitian interdiction program in 1981 after dubbing Haitians a
threat ''to our communities.'' The program included a repatriation pact
with Baby Doc Duvalier's dictatorship. From 1981 to 1991, only 28 of
more than 28,000 interdicted Haitians were allowed to apply for U.S. asylum.

Then came the 1992 executive order signed by the first President Bush,
which the current Bush administration points to as the legal authority
for ''wet-foot'' interdiction. The so-called Kennebunkport order
asserted that international refugee law did not apply to people
interdicted outside U.S. waters. Thus, Haitians interdicted in open
waters were repatriated without asylum screenings or consideration of
potential persecution.

By the time Cuban balseros started arriving in Guatánamo in 1994, 15,000
Haitians already were there. The Clinton administration had denied these
Haitians asylum although many had fled violence from the military junta
that had overthrown Jean-Bertrand Aristide's first presidency.
Ultimately, the balsero Cubans were admitted under terms of immigration
accords hashed out between the Clinton administration and Cuba's
dictatorship. With few exceptions, the Haitians were repatriated. Now
both Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers who take to the seas have a tough
time finding safe harbor.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13789111.htm