Castro’s Gift

“If U.S. leaders were to pause and reflect as Fidel Castro has, they, too, would recognize that times have changed. Cuba is no longer the security threat that it was during the Cold War; it’s just another failed communist state. The biggest threat now is the potential for waves of economically desperate refugees.”

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The quote above is from an editorial in the September 27 number of USA Today calling for an end to the embargo of Cuba. We first read it in a blog of the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. USA Today’s editorial catches our attention because we’ve rarely seen a quote that so succinctly illuminates one of the important underlying differences of opinion on this issue. One side — let’s call it the USA Today view — sees the “biggest threat” we’re now facing from Cuba as the “potential for waves of economically desperate refugees.” The other side — let’s call it the New York Sun view — sees the “potential for waves of economically desperate refugees” as no threat whatsoever to America. The refugees’ departure is a threat only to Cuba. By our lights, the exodus of Cubans to America has been a great boon to our country. An ironist could call it “Castro’s Gift.”

Irony aside, who among the liberal intelligentsia is prepared to stand up and say that the great influx to America of Cubans fleeing communism has been a bad thing for America and not a blessing for our country? It has handed up senators and corporate chiefs, athletes and artists and hundreds of thousands of hard-working immigrants who have contributed to the growth of Florida and so many other communities that have been lucky enough to get them. A fact sheet issued by the Pew Hispanic Center reckons that in 2004 there were 1.4 million Cubans in America, of whom 912,000 were foreign born. On average Cuban Americans have been enormously successful in America, attaining incomes higher on average than other Hispanic Americans and in many cases than the average of all Americans.

It may well be that there are good reasons for lifting the embargo of Cuba. Certainly one of its animating concerns, articulated by President Kennedy, was the danger of the alliance between Mr. Castro and “Sino-Soviet communism.” The Wall Street Journal, famous voice for free minds and free markets, concluded some years ago that ending the embargo would be a good step, though even the Journal would not, if we understand it, be prepared to lift the embargo without any conditionality. In any event, at no time can we recall reading in the Journal of a fear of desperate Cubans — or any others — hungering to take part, as have so many other desperate persons from so many other countries, of our freedoms. Policies — and editorials — based on such fears smack of xenophobia.

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For our part, we are against lifting the embargo of Cuba, which is what Mr. Castro wants as a farewell salute. To judge by the decision of Congressman Howard Berman to delay a hearing on the issue, Congress isn’t prepared to give him a salute. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the ranking Republican member in the House foeign affairs committee, has the more realistic — and idealistic — view. We reject the notion that the embargo has been, as USA Today put it, an “utter failure.” There were good reasons for bringing it in. They were articulated by President Kennedy in his 1962 proclamation. Kennedy’s reference was primarily to Castro’s alignment with “Sino-Soviet Communism.” We do believe it has hampered Castro’s ability to export his ideology, though, even with the Soviet Union now dismantled, the mischief the Cuban regime is intent on perpetrating is evident in, among other places, Venezuela. Julia Sweig has a piece in the Times today fretting that the Europeans will get in to Cuban markets ahead of us. But by our lights the logical time to lift the embargo would be after the Castro brothers are in the custody of a free Cuban government, a process of lustration has begun to deal with the communists’ collaborators, and an effort is underway to address the claims of those whose property was taken and whose lives were ruined during by the communist tyranny. In the meantime we’d be happy to welcome as many Cubans as America can get.