Washington, Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- A national poll shows that 52 percent of Americans think 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez should return to his father in Cuba, yet U.S. presidential candidates are moving in the opposite direction. It's no secret why: Cuban-American voters are a key to
winning Florida's March 17 primary.
A growing political firestorm over the boy's fate reflects efforts by candidates to appeal to a small but potentially pivotal group of voters in the populous state of Florida: the Cuban Americans who make up about 35 percent of South Florida's Dade County population, analysts said. The intensity
of their opposition to deporting the boy is matched by their political activism.
``The Cuban American vote (in Florida) is small numerically, but that state usually decides races by a close margin, so a shift of a couple hundred thousand votes can make a difference,'' said Terry McCoy, a professor of Latin American studies and political science at the University of Florida
in Gainesville.
Days after the Immigration and Naturalization Service ruled that the boy should be returned to his father in Cuba, all six Republican presidential candidates addressed the issue in a debate in Grand Rapids, Mich., each saying that the boy should not be returned to his homeland -- at least for
the time being.
Both Democratic candidates, Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, also weighed in. Bradley has supported a delay in Gonzalez' return, and Gore has taken careful steps to distance himself from the INS ruling.
Reno Backs INS
Attorney General Janet Reno today reiterated her agency's support for the decision, and said that a Florida judge's ruling that Gonzalez should remain in the U.S. until March lacked authority. The case belongs in federal, not state, courts, she said.
In the meantime, lawmakers are scrambling into the fray. House Government Reform Committee Chairman Dan Burton subpoenaed the child to appear before his panel Feb. 10. Senator Connie Mack, a Florida Republican, and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said they will back
legislation granting Gonzalez U.S. citizenship after Congress convenes later this month.
Public Opinion Shift
The political momentum runs counter to public polls. A Jan. 9 ABC News poll found that 52 percent of those surveyed said the boy, whose mother and 10 others drowned attempting to reach the U.S., should go home to his father, who was divorced. That's up from 46 percent in a poll taken three weeks
before the ruling was announced.
Thirty-six percent say he should remain with his great uncle and other Miami relatives.
Cuban-Americans in Dade County, the state's most populous because it includes Miami, have turned out by the thousands to protest a return to Cuba. The Cuban-American population has grown from about 50,000 in 1960, when Castro took over Cuba, to about 780,000 today, said Tom Boswell, a professor
of geography and regional studies at the University of Miami. Many of the early immigrants were from Cuba's upper class, and they are key campaign donors and activists.
Dade County ``is where candidates raise their money and spend most of their campaign time,'' said Steve Vermillion, chief of staff to Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Florida Republican. ``It's the main battleground in Florida.''
Democratic Inroads
Cuban-American voters generally have aligned with Republican candidates pushing anti-communist themes. However, Bill Clinton's overtures to them, including supporting moves to tighten the trade embargo established in 1962, have helped his party's chances.
Clinton won Florida's 25 electoral votes by about 300,000 popular votes in 1996. He didn't win Diaz-Balart's district either time, but he increased his percentage to 45 percent from 35 percent.
This time around, Gore, a Tennessee native, is counting on a sweep of the South on March 17, when Florida and five other Southern states hold their primaries, said Norman Ornstein, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Cuban Americans likely will constitute one in five Florida voters in the Republican primary, said Lance deHaven-Smith, associate director of the Florida Institute of Government at Florida State University in Tallahassee. If the Republican field is still crowded, a small group of votes can make a
big difference.
``In Florida, picking up a block like that is tantamount to winning,'' deHaven-Smith said.
Heated Rhetoric
As Republican candidates have been questioned about the Cuban boy's fate in debates, some of the rhetoric has been highly charged.
``Castro is a tyrant,'' said publisher Steve Forbes at Monday's Michigan debate. ``And to send this boy back under those circumstances would be a stain on America, a stain on our values and principles.''
``The Clinton administration looks like they may have done a deal with Fidel Castro,'' Texas Governor George W. Bush, the Republican front-runner, said at a debate Thursday in New Hampshire.
All the Republican candidates said in Michigan the boy should not be returned to Cuba for the time being. They also said the boy's father, who wants him returned, should come to the U.S. to make his own final decision about where his son shall live. Democratic contender Bradley also has
supported such an approach.
Gore, in the meantime, has distanced himself from the INS decision.
``I'd like to see the issue adjudicated in our courts, where traditionally questions like what is best for this child are decided,'' Gore said Monday on NBC's Today show. ``This child's mother died in an effort to give her child freedom.''
Court Jurisdiction
Reno today said a Florida state court that Monday granted the boy's Florida relatives temporary custody of him does not have the legal authority to intervene in the matter. She said the court's decision will have no effect on the INS ruling that his father should speak for him on immigration
matters.
``In the (Justice) department's judgment, the Florida court's order has no force or effect insofar as INS's administration of the immigration laws is concerned,'' Reno wrote.
Immigration lawyers agree that the state courts don't have authority to decide international custody cases such as Gonzalez'.
``The law is 100 percent on the INS side on this,'' said Michael Maggio, an immigration lawyer and past president of the Washington chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
The INS said it is reviewing how to respond to the Florida court ruling and that it has no intention of deporting the child by a Friday deadline.
``What we have said all along from the very beginning was that we have no intention of forcibly taking custody of this child,'' INS spokesman Russ Bergeron said.
Jan/12/2000 13:38
(C) Copyright 2000 Bloomberg L.P. |