[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 19 (Tuesday, January 31, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H891-H892]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               CRISES IN OUR CARIBBEAN IMMIGRATION POLICY

  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, our Caribbean immigration policy is a three-
sided disaster. It is a disaster for Floridians, actually for all 
Americans, for Cubans, and for Haitians. When the Federal Government 
fails to control our borders or to enforce our immigration laws, the 
financial responsibility for that inevitably falls to the States. 
Florida in fact has borne the brunt of the combined impact of the last 
2 years of ineffective Caribbean policymaking and inability to enforce 
laws designed to create a fair and orderly asylum process which we all 
want.
  We are talking here about hundreds of millions of dollars of unfair 
costs. Floridians recently applauded Senator Bob Graham for his 
amendments to the unfunded mandates bill in the other body requiring 
that the Federal Government must acknowledge the cost of its failed 
immigration policy. No more ducking and hiding on this.
  The Clinton White House has been unable to address the problems in 
our failed national immigration program. Perhaps it is because they are 
unwilling, perhaps because they do not know how. They keep repeating 
pledges to fix what is broken, but it is not happening.
  In fact, the administration is headed in exactly the wrong direction 
in one important area. By negotiating and striking deals with Fidel 
Castro, the Clinton team is playing into the hands of what we know to 
be a brutal dictator who stands at the core of one of the most serious 
immigration enigmas we have. The White House has given him exactly what 
he wants, a safety valve to drive out a minimum of 20,000 Cubans a 
year, most of them dissidents, all headed for America, and the 
legitimacy that comes from a high-level dialog with the United States 
that gives Castro some cover. Of course, he is also getting a diversion 
from the internal human rights violations that are going on in Castro 
Cuba, including the inhumane sinking of the tugboat March 13.
  Then there is Haiti where the administration's performance has been 
especially troubling. In what I would call a ham-handed effort to bring 
the military regime to its knees there, the White House slapped a 
brutal embargo on the poorest people in the hemisphere and then 
trumpeted a policy that said, ``If you can make it out to international 
waters, we'll pick you up and give you a safe haven.''
  Is it any wonder that desperate Haitians came by the tens of 
thousands? It was a self-manufactured crisis that is now a serious 
infection festering under a band-aid solution.
  At the height of the combined Cuban and Haitian crises this past 
summer, more than 30,000 Cuban refugees and thousands of Haitian 
refugees sat in limbo in the heat, in tent camps in Panama and 
Guantanamo, patrolled and operated by United States soldiers at a very 
substantial cost to United States taxpayers.
  In the past few months, the administration has been quietly paroling 
many refugees into the United States, more than we know, we do not have 
a number, more than 1,000 from the Panama camps alone. No matter how 
much passion Americans have for the plight of these refugees, and we do 
have compassion because of the miserable situations in their countries, 
they also know that this type of open-ended policy creates more 
problems than it solves. Why? Because the Federal dollars do not flow 
to the places where the refugees do, and when it comes time to settle 
these newcomers into the United States, there is no provision for them. 
It discourages individuals from using the orderly asylum process that 
is out there, which has worked well and served this country for years. 
And it encourages the truly desperate to take to the high seas in their 
rickety, overloaded boats, and sadly we have many examples of tragedy.
  It is also a losing proposition for most of the refugees. The White 
House has just completed the process of returning Haitian refugees to 
their country, the last 4,000 dramatically against their will, 
literally kicking and screaming, being dragged off boats. These 
repatriations occurred despite the protests of the Haitian Government 
which asked for time to set up a system to reintegrate the refugees 
and 
[[Page H892]] avoid further destabilization of the tenuous calm that 
exists in Haiti today. Many of these disgruntled and frightened 
refugees are camped out now in Port-Au-Prince demanding employment from 
a government that has no means to provide employment.
  Likewise the Cuban refugees are still smarting from the abrupt 
abrogation of the terms of the Cuban Adjustment Act.
  All the while the policy is failing in every direction, the bills are 
mounting. Look for a defense supplemental as early as next week to 
provide billions of American tax dollars in funds to pay for these 
extra missions. And we must not forget that there are more than 6,000 
American soldiers at risk on the ground in Haiti while there are still 
more in Panama right now donning riot gear and strapping on rifles in 
anticipation of rioting, arson, escape attempts, and suicides among the 
7,500 Cubans being moved from Panama to Guantanamo now.
  What does the administration plan to deal with its Caribbean crises? 
Where is the focus on national security in our own backyard? It appears 
from the weekend papers that the Clinton administration has decided 
that a replacement for Joycelyn Elders in the Surgeon General's Office 
takes a higher priority than the search for a new CIA director or for 
attention on our national security. I think that says something. I 
think maybe it is time we paid attention to the real problems that are 
affecting this country and leave some of the social thoughts to another 
day.


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