Central Americans Sent Home as Cubans Line Up to Come

By Joe Guzzardi
January 13, 2016
 
In the past few weeks, two immigration developments have set up an interesting question. First, the Obama administration announced that it would detain and deport certain Central Americans who illegally surged the southern border after January 1, 2014. Second, Central American officials met to discuss a pilot plan whereby 8,000 Cuban migrants may be flown from Costa Rica to El Salvador, and then be bussed to Mexico where they can cross into the U.S. Initially, 250 Cubans will be dispatched.
 
Deporting Central Americans and importing Cubans has set up a Super Bowl-type wagering proposition: In 2016, will more Cubans arrive than Central Americans depart?  My money is on the former.
 
Obama’s plan to deport illegal immigrant Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans is off to a shaky start. Of the 121 originally detained, a piddling number compared to the tens of thousands that came during the past two years, immigration lawyers have already halted four family’s deportations, and appealed the status of four more. The lawyers successfully argued that the migrants had legitimate asylum claims that they were unable to make in court.
 
At the same time, immigration advocates including the powerful AFL-CIO and influential House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi have ratcheted up their arguments that enforcing the law is inhumane, breaks up families and will have dire consequences for 2016 office-seeking Democrats who will suffer from a fierce Latino voter backlash. Since the Hispanic lobby has enormous political clout and has mobilized to defy the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the deportations, pressure will continue to mount on the administration to abandon its objective.
 
With Cuba, however, the U.S. must overcome different challenges. Since Obama restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, there’s been a mass exodus from the island as natives fear that the “wet-foot, dry-foot” era could be ending. The 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) established a policy that sent home migrants intercepted at sea, but allowed aliens who reached dry land to stay, become green card-eligible, collect welfare benefits, and get on a path to citizenship. Motivated by the possible termination of CAA and seeking alternative routes to flee the island and reach America, about 44,000 Cubans arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border during fiscal year 2015, more than twice the 17,466 that came in 2014. Nicaragua, normally Cuba’s ally, shut its borders to the refugees in November. Cubans then sought refuge in Costa Rica, but that country stopped issuing transit visas in mid-December. Nicaragua and Costa Rica claimed that providing shelter to the migrants had stretched their fiscal resources beyond their limits.
 
The wet-foot, dry-foot policy is a farce. No one on Capitol Hill can explain why Cuba alone should have a unique nationality-based immigration law. Florida’s Sun-Sentinel wrote extensively about the widespread welfare fraud perpetrated by the CAA-designated refugees who have entered the state under the outdated law. More problematic, the Central American leaders’ agreement means that some anti-American, corrupt foreign governments are dictating U.S. immigration policy.

Congress must regain control over immigration. During the Obama presidency, enforcement has plunged, unconstitutional amnesties been effected, and work authorizations to illegal immigrants issued with impunity.  In December, the White House proposed that still more work permits be granted to non-citizens. Collectively, these actions put the historic American nation on the brink of dissolution.