Arizona Legalizes Racial Profiling

The conservative “states’ rights” mantra sweeping our country has led to one of the most egregious wrongs in recent U.S. history. New legislation in Arizona requires law enforcement officers to stop everyone whom they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is an undocumented immigrant and arrest them if they fail to produce their papers. What constitutes “reasonable suspicion”? When asked what an undocumented person looks like, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law last week, said, “I don’t know what an undocumented person looks like.” The bill does not prohibit police from relying on race or ethnicity in deciding who to stop. It is unlikely that officers will detain Irish or German immigrants to check their documents. This law unconstitutionally criminalizes “walking while brown” in Arizona.

Former Arizona attorney general Grant Woods explained to Brewer that SB 1070 would vest too much discretion in the state police and lead to racial profiling and expensive legal fees for the state. But the governor evidently succumbed to racist pressure as she faces a reelection campaign. Woods said, “[Brewer] really felt that the majority of Arizonans fall on the side of, ‘Let’s solve the problem and not worry about the Constitution.’” The polls Brewer apparently relied on, however, employed questionable methodology and were conducted before heavy media coverage of the controversial legislation. No Democrats and all but one Republican Arizona legislator voted for SB 1070.

Undocumented immigrants in Arizona now face six months in jail and a $500 fine for the first offense – misdemeanor trespass – and an additional $1,000 fine for the second offense, which becomes a felony. By establishing a separate state crime for anyone who violates federal immigration law, the new Arizona law contravenes the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which grants the federal government exclusive power to regulate U.S. borders.

SB 1070 creates a cause of action for any person to sue a city, town or county if he or she feels the police are not stopping enough undocumented immigrants. Even if a municipality is innocent, it will still be forced to rack up exorbitant legal fees to defend itself against frivolous lawsuits.

The bill also makes it a misdemeanor to attempt to hire or pick up day laborers to work at a different location if the driver impedes the normal flow of traffic, albeit briefly. How many New York taxi drivers impede the flow of traffic when they pick up fares? The law also criminalizes the solicitation of work by an undocumented immigrant in a public place, who gestures or nods to a would-be employer passing by. This part of the legislation is also unconstitutional as courts have held that the solicitation of work is protected speech under the First Amendment.

The new law effectively compels Arizona police to make immigration enforcement their top priority. Indeed several law enforcement groups oppose SB 1070. The Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, an organization of police officials who favor federal immigration reform, condemned the law, saying it would probably result in racial profiling and threaten public safety because undocumented people would hesitate to come forward and report crimes or cooperate with police for fear of being deported. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police also criticized the legislation, saying it will “negatively affect the ability of law enforcement agencies across the state to fulfill their many responsibilities in a timely manner;” the group believes the immigration issue is best addressed at the federal level.

Many civil rights and faith-based organizations also oppose SB 1070. The Mexican American Legal Defense & Educational Fund (MALDEF) called the law “tantamount to a declaration of secession.” The National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders Legal Defense Fund - which represents 30,000 evangelical churches nationwide - as well as MALDEF, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are preparing federal lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of SB 1070.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles called the ability of officials to demand documents akin to “Nazism.” Former Arizona Senate majority leader Alfredo Gutierrez said, “This is the most oppressive piece of legislation since the Japanese internment camp act” during World War II. Representative Raul M. Grijalva (Dem.-AZ) called for a convention boycott of Arizona. The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) complied. AILA is moving its fall 2010 conference, scheduled for Arizona, to another state.

Even though SB 1070 will not take effect for at least 90 days, undocumented immigrants in Arizona are terrorized by the new law. A man in Mesa, Arizona looked around nervously as he stood on a street corner waiting for work. “We shop in their stores, we clean their yards, but they want us out and the police will be on us,” Eric Ramirez told the New York Times.

Ironically, expelling unauthorized immigrants from Arizona would be costly. The Perryman Group calculated that Arizona would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs if all undocumented people were removed from the state.

“This bill does nothing to address human smuggling, the drug cartels, the arms smuggling,” according to Democratic Senator Rebecca Rios. “And, yes, I believe it will create somewhat of a police state,” she added. “Police in Arizona already treat migrants worse than animals,” said Francisco Loureiro, an immigration activist who runs a shelter in Nogales, Mexico. “There is already a hunt for migrants, and now it will be open season under the cover of a law.”

SB 1070 is the latest, albeit one of the worst, racist attacks on undocumented immigrants. The federal program called 287(g) allows certain state and local law enforcement agencies to engage in federal immigration enforcement activities. But a report released earlier this month by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found a lack of oversight and training without adequate safeguards against racial profiling.

We can expect SB 1070 to be replicated around the country as the ugly wave of immigrant-bashing continues. Lawmakers from four other states have sought advice from Michael Hethmon, general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, who helped draft the Arizona law.

“SB 1070 is tearing our state into two,” said Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who called the bill “bitter, small-minded and full of hate.” He thinks “it humiliates us in the eyes of America and threatens our economic recovery.” More than 50,000 people signed petitions opposing SB 1070 and 2,500 students from high schools across Phoenix walked out of school and marched to the state Capitol to protest the bill before it passed. On Sunday, about 3,500 people gathered at the Capitol, chanting, “Yes we can,” “We have rights,” and “We are human.”

President Obama criticized SB 1070 as “misguided,” saying it will “undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans, as well as the trust between police and our communities that is so crucial to keeping us safe.” He called on Congress to enact federal immigration reform.

But Isabel Garcia, co-chair of the Coalition of Human Rights in Tucson, told Democracy Now! that there have been more deportations under the Obama administration than in any other administration. “This administration continues to follow the flawed concept that migration is somehow a law enforcement or national security issue,” she noted. “And it is not. It is an economic, social, political phenomenon.” She mentioned that NAFTA has displaced millions of workers in Mexico who flood into the United States.

Instead of expressing gratitude for the back-breaking work migrant laborers contribute to our society, there is an increasingly virulent strain of racism that targets non-citizens. Republican lawmakers are joining together to oppose federal immigration reform, opting instead for a “states rights” approach where each state is free to enact its own racist law.

Let us join the voices of compassion and oppose the mean-spirited actions that aim to scapegoat immigrants. Laws like SB 1070 demean us all.

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The New Civil Rights Movement

In a wave of mass protest not seen since the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand justice for the undocumented. An unprecedented alliance between labor unions, immigrant support groups, churches, and Spanish-language radio and television has fueled the burgeoning civil rights movement.

The demonstrations were triggered by the confluence of a draconian House bill that would make felons out of undocumented immigrants and HBO's broadcast of Edward James Olmos's film, "Walkout." But the depth of discontent reflects a history of discrimination against those who are branded "illegal aliens."

Since September 11, 2001, immigrants have become the whipping boys for the "war on terror." Calls for enhanced militarization of the southern US border - including a 700-mile-long Sisyphean fence - reached a crescendo in the bill passed by the House of Representatives.

Under its terms, three million US-citizen children could be separated from their parents, who would be declared felons and be subject to immediate detention and deportation. Those who employ them, and churches and nonprofits that support them, could face fines or even prison.

Cardinal Roger Mahony called it a "blameful, vicious" bill, and vowed to continue serving the undocumented even if it were outlawed.

Immigrants comprise one-third of California's labor force. But claims that immigrants take jobs away from Americans are overblown. Last summer, California suffered from labor shortages in spite of the high percentage of undocumented workers who labor in the fields.

As a likely result of pressure from business dependent on cheap labor and the escalating protests around the country, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that strikes a more reasonable balance. It would legalize the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants, and provide them with the opportunity to become citizens. They would have to remain employed, pass criminal background checks, learn English and civics, and pay fines and back taxes. A temporary worker program would allow about 400,000 foreign nationals to enter the United States each year; they too could be granted citizenship.

The current debate in the full Senate has focused on accusations and denials of "amnesty" and threats to national security. But the "immigration problem" is more complex than the sound bytes that proliferate. Seventy-eight percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants are from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

According to Michael Lettieri, a Research Fellow with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, "The free trade accords that the Bush administration so tirelessly promotes do little to remedy such maladies, as both NAFTA and CAFTA-DR leave regional agricultural sectors profoundly vulnerable, as well as disadvantaged, in the face of robustly subsidized US agribusiness that enables Iowa to undersell Mexico when it comes to corn."

The US was instrumental in the passage of NAFTA, which protects the rights of employers and investors but not workers. As a result of NAFTA, wages in Mexico, Canada and the United States have fallen. US food exports have driven millions of poor Mexican peasants from their communities. They come north to find work.

Seventeen-year-old Carlos Moreno was among the thousands of students in Los Angeles who walked out of their high schools to protest the attack on immigrants. "I was born here," he said, "but I'm doing it for my parents, and for my family, and for all the Latinos, because I know what the struggle is."

Sergio, an undocumented tenth grader from San Diego High School, attended a rally in San Diego's historic Chicano Park. "My parents are proud of me," he said. "They told me that I should help every time I can."

A few years ago, San Diego filmmakers Issac and Judith Artenstein released "A Day Without a Mexican." In the film, all of the Mexicans in California disappeared one day. Gone were the cooks, gardeners, nannies, policemen, doctors, farm and construction workers, entertainers, athletes, as well as the largest growing market of consumers. The world's fifth largest economy was paralyzed.

Today we celebrate the birthday of César Chávez, one of the most influential labor leaders this country has ever known. In the 1970s, when undocumented workers crossed the border and went to work in California's fields for lower wages than employers had to pay union members, the United Farm Workers began to call the migra to have them deported. Eventually, César realized that a much better solution was to organize those immigrants into the union.

The answer is not to shut out those who work for less than minimum wage, without workers' compensation, occupational safety protections, and overtime pay. "It is a common-sense solution to bring an underground economy above ground," Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) said, "with strong labor protections to improve working conditions for all."

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Lady Liberty Under Attack

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.
- Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus,
Quoted on base of Statue of Liberty

The House of Representatives today is debating the REAL ID Act of 2005 (HR 418). This bill threatens the very principles upon which this country was founded. It resurrects several anti-immigrant and anti-refugee provisions dropped from the final version of the "Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004" in December 2004 due to widespread opposition.

Although purporting to enhance our nation's security, the REAL ID Act does absolutely nothing to make us safer. Instead, it targets the world's most vulnerable group - refugees fleeing persecution, including torture, rape and other atrocities.

Under section 208 of the US Immigration and Nationality Act, a refugee may be granted asylum if she has been persecuted or has a well-founded fear of persecution if she is returned to her home country. The persecution must be based on her race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

The REAL ID Act would require a refugee to prove her persecutor's "central" reasons for harming her - essentially penalizing a refugee who cannot prove with unrealistic precision what is going on in her persecutor's mind. It would give an immigration officer or judge broad leeway to deny a refugee asylum based on her perceived "demeanor" and alleged "statements" taken in unreliable circumstances, ignoring the fact that survivors of rape or torture, suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, may appear lacking in emotion or have difficulty making eye contact.

This bill will allow the wives and children of victims of extortion by alleged terrorists to be deported or barred from asylum based on overly broad definitions of what constitutes "supporting" terrorism. It would require that non-citizens meet a virtually impossible burden of proof to convince the government they did not knowingly support terrorism. Current immigration law makes foreign nationals inadmissible if they knew or should have known that the support they provided to a group would further the group's terrorist activity.

Under the REAL ID Act, a person would be deportable unless she could show "by clear and convincing evidence" that she did not know the group she was supporting was a terrorist organization under the law's extremely broad definition of that term. Since it is almost impossible to prove lack of knowledge, this standard would make it nearly impossible for an innocent immigrant to defend herself against deportation. This would, for example, allow the deportation of an immigrant who donated money for tsunami disaster relief in the Aceh province of Indonesia, not knowing the organization that received funds had a subgroup the Department of Homeland Security considered terrorist.

The REAL ID Act would also establish extensive federal control over state issuance of driver's licenses and state identification cards. If someone is undocumented or has overstayed a visa, he could not get a license or identification card under this scheme. It would undermine the states' efforts to create a driver's license system that assures all drivers are certified to drive, are insured, and are carrying valid licenses. This would drive undocumented people further into the shadows and undermine rather than improve security.

One of the most heinous parts of this bill is section 102, which would empower the Secretary of Homeland Security to suspend any and all laws in order to ensure the "expeditious" construction of a set of barriers and roads to keep illegal immigrants out. Then, it prohibits any judicial review of the Secretary's decision to suspend any law.

What laws could the Secretary of Homeland Security suspend? Environmental and labor laws, such as the Endangered Species Act, National Forest Management Act, and the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws and the right to organize and bargain collectively. Defenders of Wildlife warns that section 102 could be used to waive all laws in all areas in the vicinity of the US borders with both Mexico and Canada, nearly 7,500 miles in total. Many of our borders run near or through national parks, forests and monuments, wildlife refuges, wilderness areas and other environmentally sensitive areas.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association cautions that the REAL ID Act will be detrimental to the welfare of the country in that it will actually increase the number of uninsured, unlicensed drivers; limit the critical law enforcement utility of Department of Motor Vehicle databases; make it difficult for people fleeing persecution to obtain refugee status in the United States; undermine free speech and association; and waste valuable resources, both economic and environmental, on false border security solutions.

Recall that the USA Patriot Act, which resurrected several formerly rejected anti-civil liberties provisions, was rammed through a timid Congress in the month following September 11, 2001. Likewise, the substance of the REAL ID Act will be tacked on to a "must pass" emergency spending bill, such as the financing of the Iraq war or tsunami relief, making it much more difficult for the Democrats to block its odious provisions.

The REAL ID Act of 2005 is opposed by myriad religious and civil liberties organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, American Immigration Lawyers Association, Amnesty International USA, Center for Victims of Torture, Kurdish Human Rights Watch, Inc., National Council of La Raza, and Human Rights First.

Bush's second term will be characterized by this and other attacks on our liberty and security. It is up to us to challenge these assaults or we will all face the wrath of what is increasingly becoming a police state.

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The Struggle for the Health and Legal Protection of Farm Workers: El Cortito, Maurice “Mo” Jourdane, Arte Público Press, 2004, $34.95

When César Chávez died in 1995, perched atop his wooden coffin was el cortito – the short-handled hoe. Until it was banned in California in 1975, the short hoe was responsible for the excruciating pain and permanent disfigurement of hundreds of thousands farm workers. Forced to stoop in the fields as they used the deadly tool to weed and thin the crops that yielded huge profits for agribusiness employers, laborers were required to work as many as ten to twelve hours a day, often in blazing heat.

It was through the relentless – and ultimately successful – efforts of Mo Jourdane that farm workers now stand tall in the fields, not required to use the short hoe.

César told Mo when they first met in 1967, “Like so many, I wake up in the night with the pain that comes from stooping in the field all day. The short hoe is the nail they use to hang us from the cross.” César’s doctor later confirmed, “stoop labor had destroyed César’s back.”

Just before Christmas in 1970, César was released after spending 12 days in jail for his nonviolent protest against the Teamsters, who falsely claimed they represented members of the United Farm Workers (UFW) union. The day after he was freed from jail by a unanimous order of the California Supreme Court, César, weakened from his fast, met with Mo, a young staff attorney at California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA). “Will you get rid of the short hoe?” César asked Mo bluntly.

A few days later, Mo began his five-year battle to ban el cortito from the fields of California. In this book, Mo takes the reader on a journey through a riveting legal and political saga. From recording the back-breaking injuries workers had suffered, to securing medical evidence documenting the crippling effects of the hoe, Mo built his case. He describes his legal strategy, the testimony, and ultimately, the decisions of the Industrial Safety Board and the California Supreme Court.

The short-handled hoe was emblematic of the conditions farm workers faced. These, mostly Mexican, laborers did the work their U.S. counterparts shunned. Lacking union assistance, they were subjected to slave-like employment conditions and forced to live in nearly uninhabitable shanty-towns, for nearly a century before the UFW and CRLA came to their assistance.

In the mid-1970s, the pro-grower administration of then California Governor Ronald Reagan ended with the election of Jerry Brown as governor of the country’s most populous state. It was a new political climate that created the conditions for the demise of el cortito. And with the Brown administration, California farm workers, heretofore excluded from the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, became the first in the United States to secure collective bargaining rights, with the revolutionary Agricultural Labor Relations Act (ALRA).

I met Mo in 1976, when we both worked at the newly-established Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), the agency charged with administering the ALRA. Although Mo worked in the field offices and I worked in the Sacramento headquarters of the ALRB, I ran into him one day at an unfair labor practice hearing in Salinas. I didn’t know Mo, but as soon as I entered the room, I knew I was in the presence of a great trial lawyer. Mo’s presentation was mesmerizing, and he advocated passionately for his client. The administrative law judge was equally impressed, and ruled in his favor.

In his book, Mo details the struggles in the fields, and in the courts, to achieve justice for those who put food on our tables. “Working for CRLA meant a great deal more than helping farm workers solve the particular problems they brought through the door of our nine offices daily,” writes Mo. “Long hours spent at the office and in the fields were part of fighting the war on poverty, an epic campaign that involved efforts to challenge systematic inequalities in America.”

Mo also succeeded in preventing the children of migrant workers from automatically being placed in the mentally retarded classes, simply because they didn’t score well on a test that was not administered in their native language.

Early one morning, while Mo was on his way to interview witnesses in an unfair labor practice case in rural Kern County, an 80,000-pound oil rig pulled off a dirt access road into the path of Mo’s car. He was severely injured in the collision. Mo survived the crash and ten surgeries to repair his badly damaged face, eyes and head.

Mo went on to be a Superior Court judge in Monterey County from 1982-1985, appointed by Governor Jerry Brown. For the past 20 years, Mo, a marathon runner, has been a staff attorney for the Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego.

Besides being an invaluable historical chronicle for all readers, this book is an inspiration to aspiring lawyers. Over and over, Mo fought the odds to secure incredible victories for his clients, through individual and class actions. He sets forth important strategies about how to win when you don’t have the law on your side: marshal the best facts you can; anticipate defenses; never give up. In the words of the familiar UFW chant, Sí Se Puede! (It can be done!)

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Punishment Politics: Tug of War Over Cuban-Boy Refugee Is Symbolic of U.S.-Cuba Embargo Problems

Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old Cuban boy, was found floating on an inner tube off the coast of Florida on Nov. 25, 1999, his mother and 10 others from Cuba having perished in a boat accident. Elian was rescued and is staying in Florida with relatives of his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a hotel doorman in Cuba. Elian's father has demanded the return of his boy to Cuba. The case has become a cause celebre in Cuba, where hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand Elian's return to his homeland. In the United States, Elian is the political flash point for an illegal and inhumane U.S. policy toward Cuba.

U.S. politicians who seek to prevent Elian from returning to Cuba point to the large numbers who have fled Cuba in recent years, many risking and some losing their lives in unseaworthy crafts to reach the shores of Florida. The desperate economic conditions in Cuba are a direct outgrowth of U.S. policy toward Cuba, which in turn mirrors the strength of the Cuban-American voting lobby. Because it is a potent political force in U.S. electoral politics, Congress and all presidents since 1959 (the year of Fidel Castro's Marxist revolution) have been loathe to cross the Cuban-American lobby.

The Cubans who left Cuba after the revolution have wielded a powerful sword on the U.S. political scene. L.D. Mallory, a state department senior official, wrote in a 1960 memorandum that, "the majority of Cubans support Castro," and "there is no effective political opposition." Thus, he maintained, "the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship." He stressed that "every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba," and he proposed "a line of action that makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government."

Later that year, the Eisenhower Administration declared a partial embargo on trade with Cuba in an attempt to pressure Cuba to change its form of government. Vice President Richard Nixon described this policy as an "all-out 'quarantine' – economically, politically and diplomatically – of the Castro regime." The Kennedy Administration in 1962 announced a total embargo of trade with Cuba.

Successive administrations have honored this embargo, and the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 was the first Congressional legislation to expand the scope of the embargo. It strengthened further in 1996 with the adoption of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, commonly known as the Helms-Burton Act, which empowers the U.S. government to cancel foreign aid to nations that grant preferential treatment to Cuba. According to Richard Garfield, of the Columbia University School of Nursing in New York, the U.S. government used "Mafia-type pressure tactics" to dissuade foreign sales to Cuba of ingredients for making soap and detergents. An amendment to the act that would have carved out an exception to the embargo for the sale of medicine and food to Cuba lost in the House of Representatives. In the past seven years, the United States has extended the reach of the embargo by attempting to force foreign countries and corporations to participate in the economic blockade of Cuba.

The United States embargo – or economic blockade – of Cuba has had disastrous effects on the Cuban people. Its restriction on the sale of food, medicine and medical equipment is unprecedented. Even the U.N. sanctions against Iraq do not ban the sale of food or medicine, because, as stated in a 1991 article in the New York Times, it is internationally "unacceptable to cause the wide-spread suffering among civilians through impeding the shipment of foods and medicines" to a civilian population.

In 1997, after conducting a 12 month investigation into the Cuban health system, the American Association for World Health found the U.S. embargo "has caused a significant rise in suffering – and even deaths – in Cuba." The AAWH report also states that, since the enactment of the Cuban Democracy Act, Cuban "patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment . . . has sharply accelerated." According to the AAWH, Cuba has access to less than half the new medicines on the world market, and it cannot buy some life-saving medical supplies anywhere. Fatal heart attacks in Cuba have increased because the U.S. pacemaker monopoly will not sell to Cuba. New anti-cancer and AIDS drugs are not accessible to Cubans. The CDA's prohibition on the sale of food, fertilizer, pesticide and animal feed to Cuba has resulted in a 33 percent drop in caloric intake. The AAWH also found that food shortages have caused low birth weight in babies and a significant increase in nervous disorders.

The economic blockade against Cuba is a crime against humanity, defined by the Nuremberg Principles as "murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds . . ." For 39 years, the U.S. government has punished the Cuban people because it dislikes their political system.

In 1948, the United Nations passed the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War. The United States and Cuba signed and ratified it, and it took effect in 1950. The Convention guaranteed "the free passage of all consignments of medical and hospital stores . . . intended only for civilians . . ." and ". . . essential foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under 15, expectant mothers and maternity cases." A blockade on food, medicines and other objects indispensable to survival is not permitted even in times of war.

The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly has condemned the embargo annually for the last eight years. This year, only the United States and Israel voted against the U.N. resolution. Ill. Gov. George Ryan, whose delegation visited Havana in October, recently urged an end to the economic embargo against Cuba. He observed that it "has been largely driven by political strength of the Cuban exile community in South Florida." Ryan's report states, "Clearly the 40-year-old U.S. policy of embargo and isolation against Cuba has not succeeded in driving Castro from power, and it is unlikely to ever be successful."

Meanwhile, the embargo continues to take its toll on the people of Cuba. In addition, the U.S. government broadcasts anti-Cuba and pro-U.S. propaganda to Cuba on Radio Marti. As a result, many Cubans have left, crossing the Florida Strait in unsafe boats. In 1994, the United States and Cuba issued a Joint Communique, providing that "migrants rescued at sea attempting to enter the United States will not be permitted to enter the United States." Cuba pledged to try to prevent unsafe departures using mainly persuasive methods. A joint statement between the United States and Cuba in 1995 stated that "Cuban migrants intercepted at sea by the United States and attempting to enter the United States will be taken to Cuba." The "wet feet-dry feet" policy, however, allows only Cubans caught on U.S. shores to become permanent U.S. residents and legal workers. Those intercepted at sea go back.

Although rescued at sea, Elian Gonzalez has not gone back to Cuba. Immigration and Naturalization Service Director Doris Meissner acknowledges that "U.S. law, and I think Cuban law, says a parent [Elian's father in Cuba] has the primary custody right. But we will create an opportunity for those who have an interest in the boy's well-being to be heard," Lawyers for Elian's Cuban-American relatives have filed a political asylum claim on his behalf. They claim Elian has a "well-founded fear of persecution" in Cuba if he returns, which can depend on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

Judging from the Cuban outpouring of support for Elian, no one seems to have a "well-founded fear of persecution." The frivolous asylum claim made by Elian's American relatives has served to focus attention on the economic deprivation in Cuba, which caused his mother to flee with him and others in an unseaworthy craft. The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba has led to the tragic conditions in Cuba. The blockade must end at once. Elian Gonzalez must go back to his homeland.

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