End the fraud in Cuban immigration

[Algernon Moncrieff]

Link to article in Ft Lauderdale Sun Sentinel

For not only are Cubans given easy access to legal residency and citizenship, they're also immediately eligible for welfare benefits unavailable to most other legal immigrants for at least five years.

Our reporting shows an alarming number of Cuban immigrants are using their American welfare checks to return to the island for a better lifestyle or regular family vacations, giving lie to any fear of persecution.

By many accounts, this revolving-door fraud is widely known, yet largely overlooked. On the streets of Miami, Hialeah and elsewhere in South Florida, people disgusted by the abuse have called their congressmen, state officials and anyone who will listen. "Stop the fraud please!" one person cried to the state.

By our accounts, taxpayers spend more than $680 million per year on welfare to Cuban immigrants, not counting the cost of Medicaid health care benefits, a number that couldn't be discerned. For until now, no one has tallied the costs, let alone the abuses.

See also U.S. welfare flows to Cuba

Cuban immigrants are cashing in on U.S. welfare and returning to the island, making a mockery of the decades-old premise that they are refugees fleeing persecution at home.

Some stay for months at a time — and the U.S. government keeps paying.

Cubans’ unique access to food stamps, disability money and other welfare is meant to help them build new lives in America. Yet these days, it’s helping some finance their lives on the communist island.

America’s open-ended generosity has grown into an entitlement that exceeds $680 million a year and is exploited with ease. No agency tracks the scope of the abuse, but a Sun Sentinel investigation found evidence suggesting it is widespread.

[Xipe Totec]

1. Where's your wall now, El Trumpo? nt