By Frank Davies And Carol Rosenberg , crosenberg@herald.com. Published Monday, January 31, 2000, in the Miami Herald
WASHINGTON -- Now sidelined in the House and uncertain of passage in the Senate, Florida Republican Sen. Connie Mack's effort to bestow American citizenship on Elian Gonzalez stirred an ideological dilemma last week for congressional conservatives:
To be pro-family or anti-communist?
Listen to Rep. E. Clay Shaw, a Fort Lauderdale Republican, who says he is weighing his aversion of Fidel Castro against parental rights and remains undecided on how he would vote on the citizenship question:
``All of us are really grappling with this,'' Shaw said. ``I hate the idea of sending the boy back to Castro, but I'm repulsed by the notion of not favoring the father and grandparents over uncles and cousins.''
Shaw added that he found many of his House colleagues ``uncomfortable with becoming decision-makers in a custody case,'' in part because he was concerned about what precedent it could set.
SENT TO COMMITTEE
``In the end, I think it's unlikely that we'll take any action,'' predicted Shaw, whose coastal district stretches from Miami Beach to Jupiter, because House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., had sent both House versions of the Elian Gonzalez bills to the Judiciary Committee of Rep. Henry Hyde,
R-Ill.
Sending the bills, to award either citizenship or permanent residence, to Hyde's committee means a go-slow posture in the House because Hyde wants the courts to grapple with the custody issue before Congress tackles it.
The move also deprives Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican, of the option of rushing it to the floor through his seat on the Rules Committee.
On the Senate side, a key early Republican defection from the pro-citizenship camp came when Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., braved a blizzard to meet with Elian's grandmothers in the Senate on Tuesday, along with Democratic colleagues who pledged to fight a floor vote on the Mack bill.
``Is Castro a dictator? Yes. Is there democracy in Cuba? No,'' said Hagel, one of 70-plus House and Senate members who met last week with Elian's grandmothers, Mariela Quintana and Raquel Rodriguez.
Hagel worked in Republican caucuses to keep the bill off the Senate floor, and by the weekend fellow Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said he also was siding with the father in the custody dispute.
``I think he belongs with his father, and I think that is the sense that's evolving on Capitol Hill,'' Specter told Reuters news agency.
``My sense is that there's a growing feeling in America that Elian should be returned to his father.''
With Democrats and some Republicans expressing distaste for the political drama, analysts said fast-track citizenship legislation was stalled by a peculiar confluence of forces, including Farm Belt interest in eroding the 38-year-old economic embargo of Cuba.
``There are Midwestern Republicans who view the embargo as hurting American farmers who want a market in Cuba -- and there's also a sentiment among religious conservatives on parental rights,'' political scientist Dario Moreno said in Miami.
Add members of Congress who want to clamp down on immigration and Democrats such as Reps. Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano of New York, who have long argued for normalizing relations with Castro, and ``granting citizenship is a hard thing for Congress to do,'' Moreno said.
``It's not like giving $1.5 million to the Miami Ballet, which is the normal give and take of Congress -- you do something for my district, I do something for your district.''
Republican Reps. David Vitter of Louisiana and Steve Largent of Oklahoma, considered strong family-values advocates, publicly disagreed with their party and signed on as co-sponsors of Rangel's return resolution.
``As a conservative and as a parent, I feel strongly that a parent should guide the destiny of his minor child absent some unique circumstances, such as evidence of abuse,'' Vitter told The New Orleans Times-Picayune.
He said he would have preferred that the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, travel to the United States to declare his desire to rear Elian in Cuba. But Vitter said the appearance of Elian's two grandmothers in the United States lessened his concerns about the father's sincerity.
DIFFICULT CHOICES
Michael Schwartz, spokesman for the conservative Congressional Family Caucus and an aide to Rep. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, said members were indeed torn between the family-values argument and their antipathy of Castro's regime in deciding on the citizenship bill.
He blamed Castro's unwillingness to allow Elian's father to travel to the United States with his wife, infant child and all four grandparents to let America test the family's wishes -- outside Cuban government interference.
``There's a really strong reason to send him back to Cuba, to be with his father. That's his father,'' Schwartz said.
But the only way to really know what is best for Elian, Schwartz said, ``is if we can get Juan Miguel here, and his family, to stand on American soil under American protection.''
He was also criticized the Clinton administration for not demanding that Castro dispatch the Gonzalez family, of Cardenas, Cuba, to Miami to settle the custody dispute.
Meantime, he characterized the citizenship proposal as a tactic to shift the issue to a family court judge ``to make sure there is a hearing before a judge, where we can make our best effort to get to the truth.''
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |