The Silence of Cuban-US Leaders on Trump Immigration Policy
Businessman Mike Fernandez questions the indifference
The Cuban-American believes that silence in the face of this situation “is not neutrality or ignorance, it is complicity and cowardice.”
HAVANA TIMES – “Immigration policy must reflect the same compassion for those in need today that we received,” Cuban-American businessman Miguel Mike B. Fernández stated in a letter dated April 14. The pharmaceutical magnate sent the letter, criticizing Donald Trump’s immigration policy, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Florida Congressmembers Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez, and María Elvira Salazar.
The article, published by El Nuevo Herald, emphasizes what Fernández calls “the silence of our own leaders” in the face of Washington’s “cruel stance toward immigrants.” The businessman, president of MBF Healthcare Partners, believes that the silence of Cuban-American politicians in the face of this situation “is not neutrality or ignorance, it is complicity and cowardice.”
Fernández, who has supported Rubio and Salazar in previous campaigns, believes that the attitude of Republican leaders, who are themselves children of Cuban exiles, has caused “real fear and harm to many in our community, in your districts.” Trump has adopted “a cruel stance toward immigrants that falls short of the values this country has always promised,” he emphasizes.
Mike’s family, born in Manzanillo, was forced to leave the island in 1964 and went into exile in Mexico. Shortly after, he moved to the United States with his parents and sister, where he began an impressive career in the health insurance sector. The philanthropist has become a much-talked-about voice in South Florida in recent decades. Now, in his letter, he warns that “revoking protected status for Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, many of whom fled oppression just like our families once did, is not just a policy, it’s hypocrisy.”
Fernández also wrote about former co-finance director of Florida Governor Rick Scott’s 2014 reelection campaign, stating “When USAID funding, which directly supports efforts to foster political and social change in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and throughout the region, is eliminated overnight, it is a betrayal.” He also has made a harsh allusion to the cuts suffered by Radio and TV Martí in recent weeks.
The multimillionaire believes that Cuban-American leaders “must focus on addressing the needs of our neighbors throughout Miami-Dade County: immigrants, workers, families struggling with housing, healthcare, and opportunities.” This requires “a new strategy, one built on courage and centered on the people of South Florida, the people who elected you to represent them,” he warns Rubio, Díaz-Balart, Giménez, and Salazar.
In the statement, he also maintains his criticism of the Cuban regime: “For decades, I have stood by you, defending the freedoms we hold so dear, those denied to us in the country of our birth and found in the grace of this one.” According to the businessman, the priority of Cuban-American representatives must be, among other things, “defending human rights, condemning authoritarianism wherever it arises, whether in Havana, Caracas, Managua, Moscow, or Washington, D.C.”
“In the end, we are not measured by loyalty to a party or a president, but by loyalty to the Constitution and our principles, even when it costs us something,” he adds, but clarifies that he is not writing the letter “with anger, but with urgency, alarm, and purpose.” His letter goes beyond a public questioning of the politicians’ attitudes and assures that he will seek to enlist more people to join his petition and speak out.
“I intend to use my efforts and to ask other voices to join us in elevating this crisis in our community that cannot be ignored,” he warns. “These are the voices of mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, students, workers, and Dreamers , all crying out for dignity, for safety, and for leadership that remembers their roots.”
Fernández recaps that Cuban-American leaders were elected thanks to the votes of the island’s exile community: “Remember, public trust is not guaranteed; it is earned and maintained,” the text emphasizes.
The questioning of Cuban-American politicians has escalated in recent weeks. Earlier this month, an unequivocal sign of this discontent surprised drivers passing under the billboard on the Palmetto Expressway in Miami. “Traitors: To the immigrants, to Miami-Dade, to the American dream,” read a sign in white on red, alongside the faces of Rubio, Salazar, Giménez, and Díaz-Balart.
“Protect TPS (Temporary Protected Status),” added a smaller sign, accompanied by the Venezuelan flag. The billboard, an illuminated sign alternating with other advertisements, located in the parking lot of the Palmetto Metro station on the outskirts of the city, was funded by the Miami-Dade County Democratic Hispanic Caucus, an organization linked to the Democratic Party. Salazar, speaking to El Nuevo Herald, called the sign “cheap Castro-style propaganda.”
A few days later, the sign received a response. “We must be grateful,” read a new billboard, featuring portraits of Fidel and Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega, and Nicolás Maduro. They are “the true traitors,” reads the text accompanying the images, “to freedom, to their people, to human rights.”
Translated by Translating Cuba.