A Potent Remedy for ‘Cuba Fatigue’

Long before Elian Gonzalez was fished from the sea, and before the Virgin Mary appeared on Lazaro Gonzalez’s bathroom mirror, official Washington was suffering from a spreading malady known as “Cuba fatigue.”

Exhausted by 41 years of obsession, the cast of characters that shapes and manages Cuba policy began to let down its guard and do the unthinkable: It openly complained about the Cuban American lobby’s drag on U.S. policy. Beyond Beltway and diaspora politics, an American public, admittedly insensitive to the exile experience, was awakening to the lure of forbidden Cuba and beginning to question why Cuban Americans appeared to exercise a veto over U.S. policy toward the island nation.

It has become a familiar refrain to bemoan the disproportionate influence of Cuban exiles, especially since the Reagan era, when Bay of Pigs veterans traded in their camouflage for pinstripe suits and hit the halls of Congress, bringing us Radio and TV Marti in the 1980s and the Helms-Burton Act in the 1990s.

But a deeper dynamic was at work. Some Cuban Americans, who charge racism at the suggestion that exiles control U.S policy, correctly point out that U.S. presidents have used their community for decades to advance a variety of ever-morphing anti-Castro policies. After the Cold War, risking the wrath of the community and losing its electoral votes and campaign contributions became an excuse for not advancing a new agenda, despite a broad national consensus to do so.

With the boy’s return imminent and the use of force a distinct possibility, Cuban Americans and Washington are paying the price for their mutual dependence. This is a watershed moment for the Cuban American community and for U.S. policy toward the island. When Washington recovers from the drama of recent events, Cuba fatigue may again set in--but only temporarily. Congress will vote on legislation to end sanctions and lift the travel ban. Our legacy-minded president will have gained the public support and, one hopes, the political courage needed to make some moves in the interests of all Americans, Cuban-born and otherwise.

Ironically, that’s because the Clinton administration began a subtle makeover in its Cuba policy long before Marisleysis Gonzalez got hers. In 1999, tinkering in travel rules allowed nearly 200,000 Americans to visit Cuba. The prospect of agricultural sales, plus a crisis in U.S. farming, galvanized the agricultural lobby, which pushed for new markets. “People-to-people” exchanges reached out to Cubans with the added benefit of fueling a new debate at home. The Clinton strategy envisioned travel by more Americans and the possibility of trade empowering “new constituencies” beyond Cuban Americans to press for a change in policy. At the same time, lest he jeopardize Vice President Al Gore’s presidential prospects, President Bill Clinton agreed to rebuff a request from 24 Senate Republicans and a cadre of senior statesmen to set up a bipartisan commission to review Cuba policy. Forgoing the example of President Richard M. Nixon visiting China, Clinton gave us baseball without the diplomacy.

However tentative these baby steps appeared, they opened the floodgates: a parade of Americans traveled to Cuba, including senior Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate, a sizable number of Congressional Black Caucus members, farmers, students, artists and actors. It became more difficult for the exile community to control the terms of debate. This was especially true last fall, when the Cuban American delegation in Congress exhausted virtually all its remaining political capital to stop a vote that stood to allow food and medicine sales to Cuba.

Satisfied that this would produce a shift in public opinion, Clinton and his top foreign-policy aides turned to far more pressing parts of the globe: Kosovo, Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Colombia. Official Cuba, for its part, was left stunned by the rejection of a full-throttle policy review, disappointed with the nominal nature of the new measures and pining for new legitimizing bilateral agreements like the 1995 migration accord.

Elian’s saga illustrates several glitches that have since emerged. In the first few years those accords were in place, the two governments worked to minimize the risk of death for Cubans wanting to leave the island for whatever reason, economic or political. The number of rafters found at sea dropped dramatically. But even as “safe, legal and orderly” migration became the norm, a lucrative and dangerous business of smugglers began to flourish in the Florida Straits.

That business now involves Cubans in Florida and on the island who charge up to $1,000 a head to bring Cubans here. Because our 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act awards permanent residence to any Cuban, however they reach our shores, smugglers need only direct their cargo to the nearest police station when they arrive. Though legal risks are low, risks to life are high, especially when too many people crowd unfit vessels.

By last summer, the migration accord had become vulnerable to attacks from all sides. The Immigration and Naturalization Service seemed to be encouraging Cubans to head for sea with Radio Marti broadcasts on the benefits of the Cuban Adjustment Act. Cuban Americans in Congress wanted to abolish the accord altogether because it requires the Coast Guard to send Cubans back to Fidel Castro’s clutches. The Coast Guard found it tougher and tougher to give chase to the smugglers. And Castro accused the U.S. of deliberately allowing the accords to fray under Cuban American pressure while demanding the seemingly impossible repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act.

Fast-forward to Thanksgiving. Elian arrives. The INS breaks with standard procedure and paroles the boy into his great-uncle’s temporary custody. Meanwhile, the Cuban American National Foundation plasters his picture on posters to protest Cuban repression. Castro demands the boy’s return and mass rallies begin. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and the White House see the train wreck coming and kick the case into Florida family courts. But a loving, fit and committed father asks for his son in letters lost or overlooked by the State Department. The INS meets with Juan Miguel Gonzalez and determines that he indeed speaks for his son. A federal court upholds the ruling. We know the rest, even if the last act is still playing out.

Whatever the denouement, four new steps can spare Cuban families a replay of these months of trauma, while demonstrating the importance of Cuban Americans in U.S. policy toward Cuba.

First, Clinton should remove government controls over family ties among Cubans here and in Cuba. Under current rules, Lazaro and Mari could only visit Elian once a year, and then only in an “humanitarian emergency” and if they receive permission from the Treasury Department. Cuban residents here should be able to travel to Cuba as often as they like, a right denied no other immigrant group except, perhaps, Libyan Americans.

Second, the United States should make it easier for Cubans wishing to visit their families here to obtain temporary travel visas, especially when invited by relatives. Our regulations now assess the likelihood for a Cuban to return home based, in part, on property ownership, an unrealistic criterion for citizens of a communist country.

Third, remittances now capped at $1,200 a year should be raised to $10,000. In a related move, Clinton should harness the well-known largess of Cuban American entrepreneurs by legalizing what many in the community have begun: direct investment in Cuba’s growing private sector. Finally, we can reduce the lure of the open seas by prosecuting the smugglers. Taken together, these steps will begin to ameliorate the economic deprivations that push Cubans to leave, while offsetting circumstances here that pull them to our shores.

Having remained above the fray since November, Clinton is now one of the few principals in U.S. foreign policy not suffering from Cuba fatigue. With these steps, he can place family reunification--for the Gonzalezes and all Cubans--at the center of a new Cuba policy. After the election, when he is truly a free man, the president might do his own legacy and the next president a favor by extending these measures to all Americans.