Since the revolution, they have been given special status, are protected from harrassment by the I.N.S. unlike ALL other immigrant groups from this hemisphere. Due to conditions of the Cuban Adjustment Act, they are given fast track access to U.S. perks like instant legal status, social security, work visa, social security, welfare, food stamps, US-taxpayer financed Section 8 housing, medical treatment, government assistance for education, etc., etc., etc.
Once they make it to U.S. soil without being intercepted by the US Coast Guard at sea, they are home free. They can arrive without papers, we don't care. They are legal. Their pasts in Cuba simply don't matter.
They share NONE of the hardship suffered by all other immigrant groups from this hemisphere.
Even when George W. Bush was financing, training, outfitting Haitian terrorists in Haiti's next-door neighbor, the Dominican Republic, and they started streaming across the border into Haiti, slaughtering fellow Haitians as they went, on their way to the capital to destroy President Aristide, Haitians who fled the carnage left in boats to try to get to the U.S. for the sake of their lives, and their childrens', and they were caught by Bush's blockade he had posted around the island, and dumped right back out onto the shore to be delivered right into the death machine.
Cuban Congresspeople like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen fought like wildmen in Congress to try to prevent immigration by endangered people in Nicaragua who were trying to flee the same situation as Reagan unleashed his bloody gargoyles upon the impoverished, terrified leftists in Central America, not wanting to allow THEM to find haven here, like the haven found by the Cuban elite after the Cuban revolution.
Cuban immigration has been a powerfully sore point considering how jealously they have guarded and treasured their special status among all U.S. immigrants. It has always seemed even uglier hearing the "exile" class spread their whoppers about how they were terrorized by the Cuban government when it is learned many of them have made visits home to Cuba to visit relatives, etc. over the years, in many cases, many times. They don't seem to feel its anyone's business if they return there or not, even in the face of the fact they have left the country with the belief that the same government is brutal and vicious, and they had to flee from Cuba to save their own lives.
The first time many of us knew exiles go back to Cuba was when the Cuban child, Elian Gonzalez was staying with his great uncle in Miami and it was revealed the great uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, had met Elian a couple of times earlier, when he made trips to Cuba and stayed with Elian's father and mother, and Elian's father had even given up his bedroom to him at night, sleeping in his own car, so his uncle could fish during the day, spend the evenings in the hotel bars, and crash there at night. Suddenly a lot of us woke up to the fact the story doesn't sound like the baloney we've been hearing all these years!
Closer investigation will reveal this is not an unusual story. It has been happening for many years.
Damed goddawful bunch of crap we were fed about Cuba.
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