Cuban Refugee Policy

The Times in its editorial of May 4 argues that Clinton’s reversal of the longstanding U.S. policy regarding Cuban refugees attempting to arrive in this country was a “reasonable (if desperate) compromise.” I beg to differ profoundly.

Understanding the current political climate regarding immigrants, it is still a fact that Cuba’s regime is a brutal dictatorship headed by the same man for the last 36 years. The only good analogy to forcibly returning those Cubans brave and lucky enough to escape the island wold be to have sent back to East Berlin those Germans who managed to scale the Berlin Wall after it was built in 1961.

Contrary to the view of The Times, there are no new “political realities” in Castro’s island. Nothing has changed in Cuba even after the end of the Cold War, the government is still a totalitarian one, dissent is not allowed, and civil and political liberties are nonexistent.

If the threat of dominoes falling into Red hands is no longer credible, surely the human-rights concerns are very much present when people are so desperate as to risk their lives in the dangerous waters between Cuba and Florida. I guess The Times doesn’t consider humanitarian concerns important enough in its analysis of the latest foreign policy fiasco by the present Administration.

The honorable answer would have been to make clear to Castro that the U.S. would not tolerate a repeat of last summer’s events. How? By treating it not like an immigration problem but instead like a national security problem, and by being prepared to retaliate against Castro’s armed forces should he dare try the same tactics again. Instead, Clinton chooses to engage in secret talks with the old dictator and becomes a participant in such a dishonorable arrangement.

ALEXIS I. TORRES

North Hollywood

* Thanks for “Clinton Caves on Cuba; but What Was Option?” congratulating the President on outdoing California’s Prop. 187 by promising “to return to Cuba absolutely any and all future Cuban boat people.”

Now how about getting Clinton to apply the same standard to all other illegal aliens?

BILL STARR

Burbank