Thousands of Americans were riveted to their television sets yesterday morning, as cameras focused on a Cuban fleeing Communist oppression for the freedom of America. In a desperate dive, he had plunged into the waters off Florida — only to be spotted and trapped by the American Coast Guard. For two hours he tried to swim past the boat to make his way for shore, and for two hours officers of the country that boasts the Statue of Liberty thwarted his heroic bid. Exhausted he finally gave up and was hauled onto an American vessel — almost certainly to be returned to the Communist country whence he fled.

It’s a policy not worthy of American ideals, yet, as the photographs on the front page of today’s New York Sun show, it is the policy that the Bush administration is now enforcing. Imagine if, during the Cold War, West Germany had taken those who managed to escape to freedom across the Berlin Wall — and returned them to East Germany. It’s inconceivable. The American policy says that those Cubans still in the water will be returned to Cuba, but that those who reach land are generally granted asylum.

This policy is at odds with American history and values. The history, according to the State Department, is that between 1965 and 1971, about 260,000 refugees were officially airlifted from Cuba during the United States-Cuban Freedom Flights. In 1980, 125,000 left during the Mariel Boatlift. The values are obvious. This is a nation of immigrants with a history of welcoming those fleeing political oppression and seeking economic opportunity. It was enunciated by President Johnson on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in a speech on October 3, 1965, when he said,” I declare this afternoon to the people of Cuba that those who seek refuge here in America will find it. The dedication of America to our traditions as an asylum for the oppressed is going to be upheld.”

It was enunciated by Governor Reagan in his speech accepting the Republican nomination for president on July 17, 1980, when he said,” Can we doubt that only a Divine Providence placed this land, this island of freedom, here as a refuge for all those people in the world who yearn to breathe freely: Jews and Christians enduring persecution behind the Iron Curtain, the boat people of Southeast Asia, of Cuba and Haiti, the victims of drought and famine in Africa, the freedom fighters of Afghanistan and our own countrymen held in savage captivity.”

Even President Bush, who is now implementing this cruel policy, expressed an understanding of what was at stake back on April 27, 2000, when Jim Lehrer asked him about the case of young Elian Gonzalez. Mr. Bush spoke of a judge in Florida whose parents in Cuba put him on an airplane when he was six or seven years old and said, as Mr. Bush put it, “See you later, son, we love you, we hope to join you.” Then, Mr. Bush went on, “But they got him out of this, this country where there’s no freedom, and he came here. And I had a long talk with him about the situation. He said, you’ve got to understand, he said, that this boy can’t go back to Cuba — at least in his mind — he can’t go back to Cuba, because he’s not going to realize the wonderful freedoms I’ve realized; I’ve come from orphaned child, so to speak, to now political leader in the state of Florida; I want this boy to have the same freedom.”

Given this political consensus, why is America shipping Cuban immigrants back to Havana by the hundreds? The immediate cause is a May 1995 agreement that the Clinton administration made with Fidel Castro. It was one of the lowest points of the Clinton presidency and led America to begin returning Cubans interdicted at sea or entering the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay who did not have a “well-founded fear of persecution” if returned. Of course, anyone other than Fidel Castro living in Cuba has a well-founded fear of persecution, but that hasn’t stopped America from shipping hundreds of immigrants back.

Cuba is not the only front on which American immigration policy is in need of reform to allow more people in. The situation with respect to Mexico is just as grim, as was underscored by the death this week of 18 illegal immigrants stuck in the hot, airless back of a Texas tractor trailer. They were locked in with more than 100 men, women and children being smuggled into the country from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the Associated Press reported. A mass exodus from Communism is starting in North Korea. How can America press an effective diplomacy when the Coast Guard is literally forcing desperate individuals, flailing in the ocean, back to the bonds of tyranny?