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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (8850)	7/20/2000 8:34:40 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

End to the embargo will unleash free enterprise forces 07/20/2000 There's a lot of Brer Rabbit in Fidel Castro. Even as the communist dictator demands that the United States end its 38-year-old embargo, he knows that it provides him with an excuse for Cuba's penury. But there's one big difference between the furry quadruped in Uncle Remus' tale and Mr. Castro. Brer Rabbit actually wanted to be thrown into the briar patch, though he begged the fox not to, because he knew that it would be his salvation. The Cuban tyrant demands that the United States end the embargo despite knowing that it would contribute to his undoing. The United States is too smart to allow itself to be suckered so. It should end the embargo. Then it should watch as Mr. Castro tries to cope with the flood of U.S. tourists and businessmen, the stampede of U.S. cellular telephones and computers that would ultimately undermine his rule. Congress is considering legislation that would lift the embargo on sales of food and medicine. It is too little, but it is a start. The version that has already cleared the Senate would permit food and medicine sales as long as no U.S. government financing is provided. The House version, which still awaits final approval by that body, would permit no U.S. financing – public or private – whatsoever. It would also restrict the president's discretionary power to allow more Americans to visit Cuba. The Senate version is best. It makes no sense to restrict U.S. financing if Cuba has the money for its purchases. As Sen. Jesse Helms says, every dollar Mr. Castro spends on U.S. food and medicine is one less dollar he has to make trouble. The North Carolina Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is an archcritic of Mr. Castro. Furthermore, it makes no sense to hinder the president's discretion on allowing visits to Cuba when those visits give average Cubans a glimpse of how disadvantaged and persecuted they are. More and more, the embargo is looking like a dangerous and silly abnormality. Recently, the United States concluded a trade agreement with Vietnam; the agreement awaits Congress' consideration and is expected to pass. The United States also relaxed its trade sanctions against communist North Korea. And the Senate is expected to follow the House's lead in granting permanent normal trade relations to communist China. All of these agreements are popular because they would spread free enterprise and democracy. If them, why not Cuba? The answer: the powerful anti-Castro lobby in the United States. But that shouldn't stop Congress from doing what's in the interest of all Americans, not just a vocal few. Let's give Mr. Castro his wish. And then let's watch him wish that we never had. dallasnews.com Further on the Viet Nam analogy - guess who opened up a stock exchange today - dailynews.yahoo.com Trade with them - in goods, services, ideas ... clearly this works better than napalm and blockades.

To: Lane3 who wrote (8850)	7/21/2000 11:13:40 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

INS can't revoke citizenship, says appeals court By Howard Fischer CAPITOL MEDIA SERVICES In a case with far-reaching implications, a federal appeals court yesterday stripped the Immigration and Naturalization Service of its ability to revoke someone's citizenship. The full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected arguments by federal attorneys that the INS power to grant citizenship necessarily gives it the ability to remove it from those same people. The judges said only a federal judge can wield such authority. "For the Attorney General to gain the terrible power to take citizenship away without going to court, she needs Congress to say so," wrote Judge Andrew Kleinfeld for the court. Although the ruling comes in the case of 10 individuals, it has a far broader reach: The case was certified as a national class-action lawsuit. Attorney Jonathan Franklin said the INS had close to 5,000 cases in the pipeline when the agency's decertification proceedings were temporarily halted by a judge in 1998. Yesterday's ruling, unless overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, makes that halt permanent. The fight surrounds a 1996 regulation enacted by Attorney General Janet Reno setting out a procedure to revoke naturalization. Ten individuals who were given notices of intent to reopen their cases filed suit in federal court seeking to block the action. Reno's attorneys pointed out that six years earlier Congress had given the INS, a division of the Department of Justice, the power to handle naturalizations. Until then, citizenship was the sole province of federal courts. That, they argued, inherently means that Congress wanted INS to handle all aspects of citizenship, including revocation. Kleinfeld said the problem with that argument is the statute gives no such citizenship-stripping authority to Reno or the INS. "There is no general principle that what one can do, one can undo," the judge wrote. "It sounds good, just as the Beatles' lyrics - 'Nothing you can know that isn't known / Nothing you can see that isn't shown / Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be,' sound good," Kleinfeld continued. "But as Sportin' Life said (in Porgy and Bess), 'It ain't necessarily so.' " He said Congress specifically empowered courts to set aside their own judgments. But federal lawmakers, in allowing the INS to grant citizenship, never gave the agency the power to revoke it. Franklin, who represented the people threatened with loss of citizenship, said he believes the entire exercise was political. He said Reno's agency was under pressure in 1996 when Republican members of Congress charged that the Clinton administration had rushed through naturalization procedures so that these new citizens could vote, presumably for Democrats. That rush, the GOP lawmakers argued, resulted in sloppy procedures that let people with criminal records become citizens. Franklin said 2,692 individuals already were given notices of intent to reopen their cases when the injunction was issued in 1998. In 94 percent of the cases, he said, the individuals were accused of failing to disclose things that, even if they had revealed them, would not have disqualified them from citizenship. Most of these, he said, were for arrests for which there was no conviction. For example, he said, one of his clients had been arrested for possession of marijuana. He said when police took the woman and the plant to their headquarters they discovered it was a house plant and she was released. In another case, Franklin said, a man's arrest was nullified by a court and he was told to treat the incident as if it never happened. Despite that, he said, the INS pursued these individuals on the basis that because they had lied they had "bad moral character."