Word: cuba
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...week long, U.S. officials tried their best to discourage Cubans from setting out on the treacherous 90-mile crossing to Florida. But it was clear that American threats stood little chance of prevailing over Cuba's hungers. By the time President Clinton went on television to reverse nearly 30 years of Cuban policy, he was characterizing the exodus as "a cold-blooded attempt to maintain the Castro grip on Cuba." Unwilling to be blackmailed by the threat of a humanitarian disaster, Clinton revoked the special status Cuban refugees have long enjoyed, which guarantees them asylum if they reach U.S. shores...
Instead of the preferential treatment that has allowed Cubans to bypass the asylum process, the President announced on Friday that refugees trying to make it to the U.S. will now face indefinite detention while their cases are reviewed by immigration officials. By Saturday Clinton had imposed other stringencies on Cuba, including new limits on charter flights and an increase in anti-Castro radio broadcasts. Most important, Clinton pledged to cut off cash transfers from Cuban Americans to their relatives on the island -- gifts that have been estimated to total $500 million a year...
Within hours of the announcement, Navy ships began collecting refugees intercepted by the Coast Guard and ferrying them to Guantanamo Bay Naval Station. The people of the U.S. "do not want to see Cuba dictate our immigration policy," Clinton declared. "They do not want to see Mr. Castro export his political and economic problems to the United States. We tried it that way once," he said, referring to the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which brought 125,000 refugees to America in five months. "It was wrong then, and it's wrong now, and I'm not going to let it happen...
...officials guess as many as 3 million of Cuba's 11 million citizens would flee if promised safe passage -- an exodus that could be fatally humiliating to Castro but equally damaging to Clinton in Florida, an important re-election state. Having chided Castro for running a big prison, Clinton cannot very well tell him to keep the doors to the jail shut. But Floridians were adamant: they would not, could not bear the cost of absorbing a vast new population of exiles. Already blistered by criticism of his reversals on Haiti, Clinton needed a firm solution that would slow...
Clinton enjoyed a certain amount of maneuvering room: there is no significant sentiment in Congress to open up immigration or lift the trade embargo on Cuba. "The solution is not for 100,000 Cubans to come to the U.S.," says New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez, "but for one man to leave Cuba, and that is Fidel Castro." While some angry Cuban Americans took to the streets of Miami shouting, "Down with Clinton!" exile leaders like Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation, lobbied the White House to keep up the pressure. The truth is that even...