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Thousands of Venezuelans residing in Florida cast ballots at their Miami consulate last month in a referendum on whether to abolish presidential term limits back home. Most voted "no," because the last thing they want is to see left-wing President Hugo Chávez run again when his second term expires in 2012. But two of the most emphatically anti-Chávez figures at the consulate weren't voters. They weren't even Venezuelan. They were some of South Florida's most prominent and outspoken Cuban-American politicians: Republican Representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Ch...
...Florida International University (FIU) poll showed that, for the first time, a majority of Miami Cubans oppose continuing the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Havana. And so the more than 150,000 Venezuelans now living in South Florida - a third of whom have arrived since Chávez took office in 1999 - have come at a good time for the state's GOP and the hard-line Cuban-American exile community...
...Venezuelans are under a lot of pressure from Chávez, who is acting more like a dictator every day," says Diaz-Balart, who accuses the Venezuelan President of human-rights abuses against opponents and of pressuring independent media that criticize his government. Ros-Lehtinen agrees, noting the similarities between the Cubans who fled the island in the wake of Fidel Castro's communist revolution 50 years ago and the Venezuelans now residing in her South Florida district. "We are very much aware of the key issues facing them," she says. Adds Ninoska Perez, director of the conservative Cuban Liberty...
...similarities may not be that strong - Chávez is still a democratically elected leader who allows, among other things, a noisy opposition press. Furthermore, most of Florida's Venezuelans aren't yet U.S. citizens, so they aren't likely to be a force at the polls. But last month's referendum result will probably push many more to try and stay in this country. More and more, says Ros-Lehtinen, her office is fielding requests from Venezuelans regarding a U.S. immigration policy known as Deferred Enforced Departure, which allows those with expiring visas to extend their stay for reasons...
That trend, if those petitions are successful, could ultimately create a cache of future voters for pols like Diaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen - a source that may only grow stronger as the ties between the Castros and Chávez grow warmer. Indeed, soon after he was first elected, the Venezuelan President asked then Cuban leader Fidel Castro for advice on how to transform his country into a socialist state for the 21st century. Chávez also began to refer to Castro as his "father." (Fidel, 82 and ailing, has since ceded power to his younger brother...