Cuban Cigars for EVERYONE!
The Gist
In a HUGE departure from stated American foreign
policy goals, the Obama administration said it will start the process of normalizing relations with our communist neighbor, Cuba. Cuba is currently one of five
countries that the Unites States does not have relations with (the others are:
Iran, North Korea, Bhutan, and Taiwan). The United States severed relations in
January 1961. The back channeling that got us here was helped by the
media-loved Pope Francis, pot-loving President Jose Mucia of Uruguay and the
ever likable Canadians. The announcement is seen as an admittance by the
United States that isolating a country diplomatically and economically simply
does not work (fifty years later and a Castro still rules Cuba). The Cuban
expatriate community reaction, which is primarily Republican, will probably be mixed.
On the one hand, they will be able to send much needed American dollars back
home with less problems. On the other hand they might see this move as an
acceptance that Cuba will not return to the days when Havana was a capitalist
haven (and a haven for organized crime: Lucky Luciano held his famous Havana
Conference at the mafia run Hotel Nacional). Reaction on Capitol was, unsurprisingly, divided among party lines (Cuban-American Senators Cruz, Menendez and Rubio were quick to comment). More important than the enormous geopolitical implications of this announcement, is the fact that lawyers, frat guys and businessmen
all over America may be able to smoke Cuban cigars once more (CNN broke down the Cuban embargo for us)…and now you know
the gist.
Obama, Reagan, the Bible and Immigration
The Gist
President
Obama’s recent executive order (allowed under ArticleII, Section 1 of the Constitution, it does
not require Congressional approval to take effect) shields about 4 million
people from deportation. In the past, executive orders have been used to desegregate the
armed forces, bar racial discrimination in federal housing and hiring, and President
Reagan used one to prohibit the use of
federal funds for advocating abortion. This particular executive order DOES NOT
give recipients a pathway to citizenship, health insurance under Obamacare, or guarantee they can stay here permanently. The order WILL allow parents of U.S. citizens (giving a little
credence to the notion of the “anchor baby”), who have lived in the US for at least five years, a reprieve from deportation
for at least three years and allow them to work. It DOES NOT, like many on both sides hoped, streamline the legal immigration process, provide tools for immigrants already here to become more assimilated, or resolve the issue of the other 6 million or so undocumented immigrants. Under President Bush, the Congressional Budget Office stated that,
“...over the past two decades, most efforts to estimate the fiscal impact of
immigration in the United States have concluded that…tax revenues of all types
generated by immigrants—both legal and unauthorized—exceed the cost of the
services they use.” The very right leaning CATO Institute,
commenting on illegal immigration, noted that several studies have shown immigration has a “positive
impact...on native-born wages.” One group whose wages are adversely affected by illegal immigration are American citizens without high school
degrees (in 2013 the nationwide high school graduation rate was 75%). The last
major immigration reform took place in 1986 when President Reagan signed a sweeping immigration bill, giving many amnesty (during his 1984 presidential
campaign he stated, "I believe in the idea of
amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime
back they may have entered illegally.”). Interestingly, and provocatively, the
President quoted the Book of Exodus when speaking of the undocumented among us, “we shall
not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger.”…and now you know the gist.
