WASHINGTON–Republicans on Capitol Hill responded angrily to the Obama administration’s termination of the wet foot/dry policy, which previously allowed all Cuban nationals who reached American soil to get a visa and have asylum status in The United States.
Florida Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen called the revocation of the 20 year policy to be a “bad deal.”
“Castro uses refugees as pawns to get more concessions from Washington so there is no reason to do away with the Cuban medical doctor program, which is a foolhardy concession to a regime that sends its doctors to foreign nations in a modern-day indentured servitude,” she wrote in a statement.
Lehtinen added, “In another bad deal by the Obama administration, it has traded wet foot/dry foot for the elimination of an important program which was undermining the Castro regime by providing an outlet for Cuban doctors to seek freedom from forced labor which only benefits an oppressive regime.”
Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart agreed saying on his Facebook page “President Obama’s numerous concessions and extension of diplomatic recognition to the murderous Castro regime does not constitute an achievement. To the contrary, his policy has been a succession of betrayals of America’s longstanding commitment to human rights and freedom, and a betrayal of the Cuban people who have suffered under oppression for far too long. This last act of diminishing lifelines to Cubans languishing in totalitarianism is one final despicable betrayal of a people who deserve better from an American president.”
Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King told The Daily Caller Friday he thinks “it’s just another one of Barack Obama’s moves to make the transition in the presidency more difficult.”
“You don’t go shifting foreign policy like that. He’s got a legacy of 20 years on it and with a week before the inauguration and I think that is it’s an insult to President elect Trump and it upsets the balance of foreign policy we have in Cuba.”
King added, “I do have a significant sympathy towards the Cubans and the Cuban people…but what I’m going to be pushing for is a regime change in Cuba and freedom for 11 million Cuban people.”