Embrace immigrants
Both Sen. Marco Rubio and the Herald’s Editorial Board putting a Miami twist on Trump’s neo-nativist playbook are shilling for a policy change long demanded by Cuba’s Communist government — the abrogation of the Cuban Adjustment Act.
Yes, the act gives preferential treatment of Cuban migrants that’s not given to other migrants. Yet, given the fact that this law has helped make the Cubans the most successful of all immigrants, rather than eliminating it, we should expand it to include other migrants. After all, what is to be gained by treating the Cubans as poorly as we have treated Haitians, Central Americans and just about everybody else? The end of the Cuban Adjustment Act will cause harm to newly arrived Cubans, negatively affect the local economy and strain the already limited resources of local and state governments. This is shortsighted and mean-spirited.
Pope Francis during his brief visit to Lesbos reminded us that migrants are not numbers or statistics, but flesh-and-blood human beings. Cannot American exceptionalism also include a generosity of spirit that can have us embrace these Cubans and other migrants as brothers and sisters?
The Most Rev. Thomas Wenski, Miami
This story was originally published April 20, 2016 at 10:51 PM with the headline "Embrace immigrants."