[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 117 (Thursday, August 18, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
               WE HAVE GOT TO GET TOUGH WITH FIDEL CASTRO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, we are coming along from Florida, and we 
discover another crisis today having to do with refugees. Today it is 
not Haitians. It is Cubans. The Florida delegation is of very much the 
same mind on what the problem is, and we agree very much on two things. 
The problem is Fidel Castro, and the people of Florida cannot solve the 
problem alone, nor can they afford to pay the bill of solving the 
problem, nor can they afford to pay the single-handed bill of takeing 
care of all of the people who are now being allowed unconscionably to 
come across the Florida Straits in inadequate boats, life rafts, rafts 
and other devices, basically trying to get to the magnet that is 
offshore, the life saving of the Coast Guard, or the American Navy, or 
any ship that is out there to get them out of the clutches of Fidel 
Castro's Cuba.
  Of course there is a magnet. Things are very terrible in Cuba, and of 
course we need to do something about that. But I do not think that it 
is a reasonable proposition to encourage people to go to sea in boats 
that we know are going to sink or might not make it, where lives are 
not only going to be lost, they have been lost tragically, and more 
lives inevitably will be lost if this keeps up.
  Why has this suddenly become serious? This is nothing new. People 
have been hearing about this for a long time.
  Not so. There is a new policy by Fidel Castro. It is basically to let 
people go and, in fact, to sort of encourage people to go to sea in 
these unsafe conditions in the idea that he is going to make a problem 
for the United States of America, another Fidel Castro tactic.
  Fidel Castro is not our friend. He has never been our friend. He is 
our avowed enemy. He is a Marxist, and maybe not a Marxist of the 
European style, maybe more a Marxist of the Latin style, but 
nonetheless he is an avowed enemy of the United States of America who 
has pledged to do his best to do us all in. Now that he no longer has 
the muscle of his Soviet Union friends and their client states, 
obviously his threats are not as serious, but he is still the avowed 
enemy of the United States willing to make mischief and trouble for us 
wherever he can, even to the extent of victimizing Cubans to make his 
point. That is unconscionable, and it is probably the essence of human 
rights violations.

  Is this serious? You bet it is serious. We picked up 574 Cubans 
escaping yesterday. They have, of course, come to Florida. Governor 
Chiles, and this is many days in a row going on, and it is accumulating 
so we are now dealing with thousands of people I understand, Governor 
Chiles has declared an immigration emergency. The Members of the 
Florida delegation have asked President Clinton to implement the 
Federal mass immigration emergency plan. This plan has never been 
tested. Now is the time we need to test it because we know we have got 
thousands of Cubans fleeing, on the move, more to come, and inevitably 
this is a crisis that is escalating, not going away, and, if you 
remember Haiti, it is sort of deja vu all over again.
  We have created this magnet for people to come off shore because they 
think, if they can just get outside these territorial waters, we will 
pick them up and bring them to a life of well-being and prosperity in 
Miami. Unfortunately it does not quite work that way, and that is why 
the administration needs to get serious and have a plan that works a 
whole lot better than what they did in Haiti--I guess I should say what 
they did not do in Haiti which led to a serious crisis there with 
refugees, and now, interestingly enough, has left a refugee camp on 
Guantanamo which is nothing more than a tent city of some 16,000 people 
where they have had not one, but two, riots in the past few days 
because conditions are so bad, and just as an unnecessary, unwanted 
wrinkle, we have got a hurricane bearing down, coming across the 
Atlantic. You can imagine what that is going to do to a tent city of 
16,000 people in Guantanamo Bay, to say nothing of those ships that we 
have, our Navy ships, our amphibious assault ships loaded with Marines, 
rattling the sabre, flying the flag off of the shores of Haiti, which 
has been a friendly neighboring country, or to say nothing of what that 
hurricane might do to our other ships in the Florida Straits who are 
now out there on patrol duty.
  So, we have got a series of problems on our hands, and I think it is 
time the administration got serious about dealing with this thing.
  The first point is the problem of Fidel Castro. This is not a problem 
of dealing with Cuban people. It is a problem of Fidel Castro. He is 
the enemy. The leaders of Haiti are not our enemies in the sense that 
they have decided war or mischief on the United States. Yes, they 
violated democratic principles, and, yes, they brutalized human rights, 
but Fidel Castro makes them look pretty much like kindergarten compared 
to what he has done.
  We have got to get tough with Castro, we have got to have sanctions, 
and we have got to focus on that problem, and the administration needs 
to do it now.

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