Last week, US secretary of state Madeline Albright let loose with a hypocritical blast at Cuba for supposedly having denied exit visas to 117 (yet to be identified) Cubans who wanted to leave the island and had United States visas.
The US State Department web site contains details of what it claims are the categories of people denied exit visas. They include, among others, people who have not completed their military service or did not have the roughly $500 to pay the Cuban government fees. Apparently, the department did not notice the contradiction between Albright's statement and the far from arbitrary list of reasons for the visa denials.
The State Department refused to provide journalists with the particulars of any of the would-be emigres, thus making it impossible to independently verify the charges. If almost any other target was involved, the "serious" US news outlets would not have touched such unsubstantiated charges with a 10-foot pole. But when it comes to official Cuba bashing, the usual rules do not apply. The major US media were only too happy to spread the charges.
Albright's statement is proof positive, if any more were needed, that the US policy towards Cuba is annexationist. Washington considers itself entitled to meddle in the most outrageous way in Cuba's internal affairs.
One reason for the State Department communique is mentioned in Albright's announcement: "Over the past year, the Cuban government has engaged in ceaseless rhetoric about migration issues".
Albright suggests that the reason why people make the risky, illegal boat crossing to the US is that the Cuban government won't let them leave by normal means. This simply won't stand up. More than 100,000 Cubans have legally emigrated to the US since the migration accords went into effect, every single one with the requisite Cuban government documents. To come up with a 117-person list as the "explanation" for the increasing number of illegal crossings is ridiculous.
What's really behind the illegal immigration is that the US is still, despite the accord with Cuba in which it promised to stop illegal immigration, receiving with open arms all those who make it to Florida. Even if you have a criminal record in Cuba, and are thus ineligible for a US visa, the US will let you stay — provided you made the crossing illegally. Moreover, the Cuban American Adjustment Act further encourages illegal crossings by granting Cubans pretty much automatic permanent residency in the US and a fast track to US citizenship.
At the same time that the State Department handed Cuba its official protest, it notified Cuba that it would not grant Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, a visa to attend a United Nations-sponsored conference of the Interparliamentary Union in New York this week. This is a trampling of solemn and binding US commitments as a United Nations host country to not impede the participation of member nations in UN activities.
It gives the lie to Albright's claim that the US is seriously interested in negotiating with Cuba about immigration issues but is being prevented from doing so by Cuba's refusal to meet. If the US authorities had such a burning desire for a bilateral meeting, they would have welcomed Alarcon's trip: Alarcon is Cuba's lead negotiator in the immigration talks with the US.
The US policy of returning those caught at sea, but permitting those who reach shore to stay, has led to professional smugglers with high-speed boats taking over the route, and to increasingly violent incidents between their racing crafts, overfilled with people, and Coast Guard cutters. The US government's failure to stop this trafficking in human beings and punish the smugglers shows just how hypocritical the State Department is in objecting to Cuban government fees of a few hundred dollars for an exit visa: the going rate charged by the smugglers for the crossing is between $10,000 and $15,000 per person.
BY GILBERTO FIRMAT