-Caveat Lector- ~Amelia~ Some of you may be too young to remember this but we are still dealing with the aftermath of this horror. President Carter made the mistake of saying we would accept ANY Cubans seeking asylum here. Castro promptly emptied his prisons and mental hospitals and sent them our way. I was looking for the crimes traced back to this but did not locate it. At one time, I saw the figure of 35,000 crimes committed by this one group. If we have open borders with Mexico, what is to stop that country from doing the same thing? Nothing. 8-( ~Amelia~ CUBANET ... CUBANEWS December 17, 1999 Mariel Debacle Still Haunts U.S. Chicago Tribune. December 17, 1999 Except for the hostage-takers at the parish jail in St. Martinville, La.--whose criminal actions merit more time behind bars--there is no simple solution to the problem posed by Cuban boat people being imprisoned indefinitely by U.S. immigration authorities. Were Cuban-American relations at all normal, they already would have been deported, as U.S. law requires. But Cuba won't agree to take them and U.S. authorities rightly fear releasing them into the population at large. The current mess dates back to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, a face-off between the U.S. and Cuba so colossally mishandled by the Carter administration that it still reeks 20 years later. An invasion of the Peruvian Embassy in Havana by asylum-seekers quickly degenerated into a free-for-all that ultimately brought about 125,000 Cubans to Florida, including thousands of mental patients and convicts. A small, hard core of these were later convicted and sentenced for crimes committed on U.S. soil. But even after serving their sentences, about 2,400 of them remain in jail: Federal law requires that they be deported, but Castro won't take them back. Following 1987 prison riots similar to that now happening in Louisiana, a mechanism of hearings and paroles was used to free some of those caught in this Catch-22. They will never receive resident visas, much less U.S. citizenship, but they are nevertheless freed under custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. But according to INS, the fate of 1,750 of those still imprisoned is further complicated by the fact that every one of them has been released at least once--and has committed another crime that put them back in prison. These are not nice folks. Following 1984 talks with the U.S., Cuba took back about 1,500 Mariel rafters detained here. This process, however, fell apart amid the subsequent ups and downs of relations between the two countries. The latest snag in the immigration negotiations is the case of Elian Gonzales, the 6-year-old boy whose reunion with his Cuban family is being held hostage by the passionate Cuban-American politics of Miami. That should be resolved immediately, with Elian returning to his father in Cuba, so that talks can proceed on other issues, including the final repatriation of this group of Mariel rafters. Not a perfect solution by any means, but about as neat a closure as one can hope for to this very messy foreign-policy blunder. [ BACK TO THE NEWS ] <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
