Bush coddles Castro, betrays liberty

[Boris Godunov]

Ned: You're wrong.

It wasn't a custody issue, because Elian was not a U.S. Citizen, and his legal father was alive and well in another country. U.S. Courts have no custody jurisdiction on foreign citizens! The court COULDN'T rule on custody of Elian, it had no authority.

I'll post U.S. Immigration law again, since you apparently missed it:

"an unmarried person under 21 years of age and includes a child legitimated under the law of the child's residence or domicile, or under the law of the father's residence or domicile, whether in the United States or elsewhere, and, except as otherwise provided in sections 320, and 321 of title III, a child adopted in the United States, if such legitimation or adoption takes place before the child reaches the age of sixteen years, and the child is in the legal custody of the legitimating or adopting parent or parents at the time of such legitimation or adoption."

A child cannot seek asylum unless a legal parent or guardian is petitioning on its behalf. A U.S. court cannot grant custody of a foreign citizen to U.S. nationals when the child's legal parent is alive. The Court had NO authority. The U.S. Immigration Dept. were the ONLY folks who DID have authority, and their parent org, the DoJ.

What Reno did was absolutely correct under the law. You'll note that U.S. courts dismissed the family's lawsuit against Reno for having no merit.

Again, if your kid was being held against your will in a foreign country, should he be returned to you? Yes__ No__

[chequita guevara]

Except that the Miami relatives had no standing to challenge Elian's father's custody. Therefore the state court had no jurisdiction.

And by the way Ned, support for returning Elian was running about 80/20 in the US, higher when you exclude the insane Cuban community in the US. Even among Cubans, there was quite a bit of support for returning Elian to his father, it just was not safe for them to voice it openly.

Anyway, immigration has the first shot. If you adopt a child but imigration says you cannot bring him into the states, not amount of custody awarded by the state courts will help you, as Angelina Jolie recently learned. Elian's Miami family was awarded temporary custody until INS decided what to do with him. Once they had made their decision, they were obligated under the law to return him, which they repeatedly refused to do depsite court rulings. Frankly, I think they got off easily despite the fact that there were in contempt of court and engaged in kidnapping.

[Dom Pedro II]

I see the word "insane" and "Cuban" used a lot in the same sentence from you, chegitz...

[Japher]

Why would anyone want to leave the wonderful confines of that miraculous political system that is Communism?

Why arent Nuclear Subs sinking these boats?

[Dom Pedro II]

Because the Cubans don't have any...

[GePap]

I am sorry, but the Cubans get absurdly better treatment than anyone else. I myself came form a "repressive regime" (must have been cause it was 'liberated' 6 months after I left) and heck, my faily could have claimed some political harrasment (my mom lost her gov. job due to politics), but the fact is that we were not political asylum seekrs, and neither were 99% of Panamanians coming to the US. Ditto for Cubans.

No, Castro's regime is no more repressive than dozne of others, yet people from those do not get the same treatmnet. Many other state have much worse political violence: you are less safe inHaiti from political violence, and much poorer than if you lived in Cuba. Again, the execution of 3 hijackers after an "expidated trial" caused a major uproar..anyone who thinks Cuba is full of execution chambers does not have a clue.

Now, if people here are arguing that ALL immigrants form ALL countries that are not democracies, or face internal political violence get the same treatment as Cubans, fine by me..If not, you are the ones who are freaking hypocrites.

[Japher]

I'm sorry but if we let all the cubans who wanted to, come into the states we'd have to start up at least 3 more baseball teams!

hehe

[Velociryx]

Gepap....methinks you tuned in late.

My position is not hypocritical in the least...it is:

1) IF the USA is so concerned about liberty and freeing people from oppression around the globe that it goes to war with Iraq touting that as a reason (and sending Americans to die for that as a stated cause of the war)

then

2) It follows that oppressed peoples seeking political asylum FROM oppressive regiemes would be welcomed here with open arms, especially if so doing does not add to our risk in any way--and certainly less than say, keeping 150k US soldiers in Iraq for extended periods of time.

IF the current administration is serious when it says that our mission is liberty around the globe, then this attitude is perfectly consistent with it.

IF the current administration is just blowing smoke up everyone's arse, then sending them back is the obvious choice.

-=Vel=-

[Dom Pedro II]

I would have no problem sending them back, just like all other illegal immigrants, but I also feel we shouldn't be treating Cuba like the pariah of the Americas either.

I don't think it was wrong of us to do so, I think it was just plain stupid, as I said above.

I'm more interested in seeing consistency with regards to Cuban policy... and frankly, there is none. It is as irrational today as it was in 1960.

[SlowwHand]

That's right!
Japher, want to snuff a son ?

[GePap]

Originally posted by Dom Pedro II
I would have no problem sending them back, just like all other illegal immigrants, but I also feel we shouldn't be treating Cuba like the pariah of the Americas either.

I don't think it was wrong of us to do so, I think it was just plain stupid, as I said above.

I'm more interested in seeing consistency with regards to Cuban policy... and frankly, there is none. It is as irrational today as it was in 1960.

I have no porblem with ending the embargo with Cuba: if trade with China, Vietnam, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are A-OK, for the life of me , why isn;t it OK with Cuba? "Cause it makes the gov stronger"? Ditto for all the examples given, some of which are communists, but we don;t seem to care, now do we?

[Dom Pedro II]

If you consider for a moment that nearly every single major revolutionary movement in the past six decades, most notably Cuba, China, and Vietnam, when you consider that ALL of them came to us first... it seems stupid that we so readily turned them away! Even Russia in 1917 came to us for support and we invaded them.

See, if you give them support, then you give yourself more clout with them, and you prevent them from going overboard. If we had flooded the Cuban market with consumer goods, the regime would've been out with the wash in a few years... or at least much of its initial brutality could have been blunted. The same goes for China and Vietnam.

But by pushing them away, we drove (all three of them) into our enemies' hands.

Think about the potential effect we could have had if we had gotten our foot in the door... I suppose hindsight is 20/20, but in some cases, the victory was already decided. Castro came to us AFTER Batista had already fled!

And there was an American general in China who said "We ought to back Mao" right after World War II, and we didn't... Chiang Kai-shek was just as much a Communist as Mao, he just didn't call himself one... what difference would it have made?? Castro wasn't even ready to call himself a Communist until AFTER we turned him away for Christ's sake!

[SlowwHand]

Who cares?
All 3 are on the verge of implosion, and North Korea, too.

[Velociryx]

And when they implode, Sloww....what do you think will happen to the people there?

Will they all go out and get an ice cream, then come back home and watch the superbowl? Or will lots of people die?

-=Vel=-

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, gee, Sloww... I didn't realize you'd be so calous about flushing billions of dollars of taxpayers' money down the toilet and throwing thousands of men's lives away?