No hassle Cuba travel: don’t forget the affidavit
Al’s Loupe
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
The Homeland Security agent signaled to me curling his index finger. I walked over to him. “Yes?” I looked at him quizzically. “When was the last time you flew to Cuba?” he asked. “In the summer,” I answered. He then requested an affidavit.
“I’m a journalist,” I explained to the agent who looked like he had not slept well the previous night. “Where’s your affidavit?” he asked again. “There’s no such thing,” I answered. Again I mentioned that I travel as a journalist, handing over copies of the last two editions of Progreso Weekly. I also gave him a Progreso bookmark I use as my business card.
“Where’s your affidavit?” he asked for the third time. “That doesn’t exist,” I told him once more, my dander raised just a bit now.
On Saturday, December 27th, I had decided to fly to Havana. As editor and publisher of Progreso Weekly, I am allowed to do so in spite of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Less than a week earlier, on December 21 to be exact, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge had gone on national television to announce that the government had again “raised the national threat level from an Elevated to High risk of terrorist attack – or as more commonly known, from a Yellow Code to an Orange Code.”
Ridge added, “The information we have indicates that extremists abroad are anticipating near-term attacks that they believe will either rival, or exceed, the attacks that occurred…nearly two years ago.”
Homeland Security’s budget in 2004 is almost $30 billion. And having read of the impending doom based on Secretary Ridge’s statement, I wondered what the hell the sleepless agent wanted in my case. Because if it’s an attack that will rival the ones on 9/11 we’re trying to avoid, I figured the portion of the money being used the morning of the 27th at Miami International Airport on our flight to Havana was a waste of taxpayers’ dollars.
In the meantime, while we throw away hard to get money on security agents with little knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, and the law regarding the irrational embargo on Cuba, President George W. Bush announces a 2005 budget that seeks to cut domestic costs. As reported by Robert Pear of The New York Times, it would reduce housing vouchers for the poor, require some veterans to pay more for health care, slow the growth in spending on biomedical research, and reduce funds for job training and employment programs.
Increased would be defense spending and money for the Department of Homeland Security.
The conservative Heritage Foundation economist Brian M. Riedl said in the same New York Times article: “President Bush is not focusing on his fiscal conservative base right now. He’s trying to position himself in between conservatives in Congress and the Democratic Party. It may be good politics, but it’s bad policy…”
The Riedl statement explains what is happening on a daily basis at Miami International Airport. Hoping to please the masochistic, hardcore Cuban American right in Miami, W’s administration strategists have decided to put aside the First, the Fourth and the Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution and hassle travelers to Cuba for the sake of votes in November, 2004.
What has surprised me, to this point, is that not one Miami political leader has yet to complain of the treatment received by people traveling legally to Cuba. By now you would have thought that someone would have yelled, evoking his or her displeasure with the Cuba visits if they so desire, but outraged at the treatment Cuban Americans and others are receiving at the airport while exercising their constitutional right to travel.
In my case, I knew if I argued long and hard enough with the sleepless and irascible agent, he’d have to let me through. Of course, I was more than willing to start a mini scandal at the airport which would have brought me always-useful publicity for our publication. Something, I guarantee, the Bush’s and their consorts here in Miami would rather not allow us.
But it was not me I thought about when this attempt at intimidation was being employed. It was the thousands of innocent persons who simply want the opportunity to visit a mother, a father, a brother, sister or cousin.
It demonstrates once again, that the Bush people care of only one thing: reelection in 2004. Even if it means harassing a little old lady in a wheelchair traveling to Cuba to visit a family member – maybe for the last time.
In my case, after 20 minutes of arguing with the pain in the ass agent – who had the audacity to ask who I was going to interview in Havana – sleepyhead came to the conclusion I was a losing proposition. Finally giving in, he waved me through saying: “Go ahead. But next time… bring an affidavit.”
