Cubans (not) coming in the US

[cema]

Shame.

Fifteen Cubans who fled their homeland and landed on an abandoned bridge piling in the Florida Keys were returned to their homeland Monday after U.S. officials concluded that the structure did not constitute dry land.

Generally, I agree that illegal immigrant should not be treated the same way as legal immigrants, though I do not count illegal immigration (by itself) a particularly serious crime. However, the dry/wet policy regarding Cuban refugees is simply shameful. Let them all come ashore! Let them live here! And make them all legal.

Comments

[cema.livejournal.com]

When you spent 2 years in the Soviet Army, did you choose to play that game or were forced to play it?

[spamsink]

It was far from voluntary, therefore was not a game by definition. On the other hand, I refused to play the game of faking a medical condition in order to avoid it.

[cema.livejournal.com]

And just like that, life in Cuba is not a game: people are forced to live by the rules they abhor. So they are trying to leave, to avoid the game. The US is both luring them and setting the idiotic rules (the dry/wet feet policy is a prime example). I think the rules are shameful and need to be changed. And I think that the rules that forced us in the military service should have been changed too (and they were, for a while anyway).

[spamsink]

to avoid the game

It's not a game to them, they did not make any choice. It's their life. (Tough shit, so what?) If they do not like it, they can use any means available to avoid it, even stupid, dangerous and shameful - from a 3rd party POV - games if they so choose, that happen to exist at the time. I do not see any ground for a claim that any particular possibility for them to escape must exist. Again, the ex-Cuban lobby wants that game to continue, and the Government has to limit the extent of it as much as possible, up to the verge of eliminating it, without displeasing that lobby.

BTW, I reject the notion of "luring" altogether; people are not fish nor moth, they can reason and weigh risks and rewards before making a conscious choice to respond to an overt (or covert, for that matter) advertisement.

[cema.livejournal.com]

Right, it's life. Could be better.

I did not use the word "must" because it is, in this context, ambiguous. "Must" philosophically? Legally? Ethically? I just think that the situation is shameful.

I did use the word "luring" in the sense which is not available to the fish or moth (not to the earthly kind, anyhow): the US offers these people certain opportunities. Yes, they have to weigh this against the dangers, as usual. That is normal. What is not normal is some of the rules the US set.