U.S. Should Welcome Cuban Escapees
By David Holcberg (Austin American-Statesman, June 14, 2005; El Nuevo Herald, June 6, 2005)

The U.S. government should welcome the Cuban escapees who were independent, inventive and courageous enough to escape Cuba in a vessel fashioned out of an old taxicab.
 
The escapees, intercepted by the Coast Guard on the shores of Florida, risked their lives to be free in America. If the U.S. government follows its long-standing policy on Cuban refugees intercepted at sea, it will send these people back to Castro's island, where they will likely be thrown in prison and tortured. Cuba is a brutal communist dictatorship founded on the principle that individuals have no rights. As these refugees demonstrate, Cubans don't even have the right to leave the country.

 

The U.S. government should recognize that these Cuban escapees have a right to live in freedom, and give them asylum here in America. But more than that, our government should put an immediate end to the unconscionable policy of sending freedom-seeking refugees back to a totalitarian dictatorship.

 

  
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