Diplomats engage, Cubans flee, Miami ‘unprepared’

Fabiola Santiago: Diplomats engage, Cubans flee, Miami 'unprepared'

One year later, historic rapprochement fails to thwart immigration
Lack of vision, inertia about massive flight from Cuba
Mayor of Miami says city 'unprepared' to deal with influx
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO
fsantiago@miamiherald.com

The Obama administration calibrated diplomatic moves, courted press
relations — and attended to such details as the emotional timbre of its
flag-raising ceremony in Havana.

But the administration and rapprochement allies grossly underestimated a
major factor in the speed-dial pursuit of diplomatic relations with the
island: the Cuban people's desire to emigrate to the United States — and
the Castro regime's historical willingness, in times of pressure, to
open a door for them to flee.

One year after President Barack Obama's historic shift in Cuba policy,
the lack of vision — and inertia — on the well-charted subject of
massive flight from Cuba is shaping up to be one of the strategy's failures.

The issue of the thousands of Cubans stranded at the Costa
Rica-Nicaragua border and in Panama clamoring to be allowed to continue
on their trek to the United States is begging to be addressed.

A one-way, Havana-Quito plane ticket, a cellphone, and an underground
road map charted by those who have made the crossing turned a steady
trickle since 2013 into a flood post-rapprochement.

The number of Cubans packed into holding facilities where they sleep on
the floor or on foam pads is growing daily — 4,000-plus in Costa Rica,
taxing the small, peaceful nation's limited resources. And more than a
thousand wait in Panama as of this writing.

The administration doesn't want to admit it, but it's facing another
immigration crisis.

Nicaragua has closed its border; Belize has refused passage, too. The
Cubans sold their belongings and bought one-day tickets. They can't or
don't want to go back to Cuba and they can't continue forward. As their
numbers grow and days pass without resolution or a plan, tempers flare,
and children and pregnant women need medical attention.

"Tell us the truth. Tell us that we're going to be here three years or
that we're being hanged, but tell us the truth," one man clamored in a
television report.

Far from giving Cubans hope that the spoils of engagement would better
their lives, Obama's announcement and the restoration of diplomatic
relations between Washington and Havana served to accelerate the pace of
the flight to Miami before the way out closed again.

To hear the mayor of Miami say "we're not prepared" for another exodus
is to be thrust back to the days of the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the
1994 balsero crisis when similar pronouncements were issued hoping to
get Washington's attention.

If history is an indicator, the Obama administration will be forced to
deal with the crisis — and with all other doors closed, it will have to
process and airlift the Cubans as President Clinton did with the
Guantánamo tent-city refugees.

The American government anticipated that Cuba would push back on human
rights issues — repress more, and that the Cuban government has done,
and openly. But unbelievably, the administration didn't envision that
another generation, this one basking in the glow of the stars and
stripes — wearing it on their T-shirts on the way out — would choose to
escape.

Ready or not, Miami, city of arrivals, will most likely once again
resettle this transplanted Cuba. The only difference is that this time
it will be amid studiously calibrated silence from Cuban Americans and
the prayers of the faithful at the Shrine to Our Lady of Charity.

Source: Fabiola Santiago: Diplomats engage, Cubans flee, Miami
'unprepared' | Miami Herald -
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article49097650.html