Havana/“The immigration policy must reflect the same compassion for those who need it today that we receive,” said the Cuban American businessman Miguel Mike B. Fernández. The magnate of the pharmaceutical sector sent the letter, criticizing the immigration policy of Donald Trump, to Secretary of State Frame Rubio and congressmen Mario Díaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez and María Elvira Salazar.
The text, diffused by him The new heraldemphasizes what Fernández calls “the silence of our own leaders” before the “cruel position towards the immigrants” of Washington. The businessman, president of MBF Healthcare Partners, considers that the mutism of Cuban American politicians in this situation “is not neutrality or ignorance, is complicity and cowardice.”
Fernández, who has supported Rubio and Salazar in previous campaigns, believes that with his attitude the Republican leaders, who are sons and daughters of Cuban exiles, have caused “fear and real damage to many in our community, in your districts.” Trump has adopted “a cruel position towards immigrants that is below the values that this country has always promised,” he emphasizes.
He warns that “revoking the status of protection of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, many of whom fled from oppression just like our families in their day, is not just a policy, is hypocrisy”
Mike’s family, born in Manzanillo, was forced to leave the island in 1964 and left for exile in Mexico. Shortly after, along with his parents and his sister, he moved to the US where an impressive career began in the health insurance sector. The philanthropist has also become the last decades in a very heard voice in southern Florida. Now, in his letter he warns that “revoking the status of protection of Venezuelan and Cuban immigrants, many of whom fled from oppression as well as our families in their day, is not just a policy, it is hypocrisy.”
According to Fernández’s text, former financial co -director of the re -election campaign of the Governor of Florida, Republican Rick Scott, in 2014, “when USAID financing is eliminated overnight, which directly supports efforts to promote political and social change in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and throughout the region, it is a betrayal.” It also makes a hard allusion to Suffered cuts by radio and tv Martí in recent weeks.
For the billionaire, Cuban American leaders “must focus on meeting the needs of our neighbors throughout Miami-Dade County: immigrants, workers, families fighting with housing, medical care and opportunities.” For that, “a new strategy, based on courage and focused on the people of South Florida, the people who chose them to represent them,” warn Rubio, Díaz-Balart, Giménez and Salazar.
“For decades, I have been by his side defending the freedoms that we appreciate so much, those that were denied in the country of our birth and we find in his grace”
In the document also maintains the criticisms of the Cuban regime: “For decades, I have been on his side defending the freedoms that we appreciate so much, those that were denied us in the country of our birth and we find in the grace of it.” According to the employer, the priority of Cuban -American representatives must be, among others, “defend human rights. Condemn authoritarianism wherever it arises, either in Havana, Caracas, Managua, Moscow or in Washington DC”.
“In the end, we do not measure ourselves for loyalty to a party or a president, but for loyalty to the Constitution and the principles, even when it costs something,” he adds, but clarifies that he does not write the letter “with anger, but with urgency, alarm and purpose.” His letter goes beyond public questioning to the attitude of politicians and ensures that he will seek more people to join his request and raise the voice.
“I intend to use my efforts and ask other voices to join to raise this crisis in our community that cannot be ignored,” he warns. “These are the voices of mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandparents, students, workers and DREAMERSall crying out for dignity, for security and leadership that reminds of its roots. ”
Fernández recapitulates that Cuban -American leaders were chosen thanks to the votes of the island’s exile community: “Remember, public trust is not guaranteed, it is won and maintained,” the text rises.
“I intend to use my efforts and ask other voices to join to raise this crisis in our community that cannot be ignored”
The questions to Cuban -American politicians have risen in recent weeks. At the beginning of this month, an unequivocal sign of that disagreement surprised the drivers who passed under the hoarding of the Palmetto highway, in Miami. “Traitors: to the immigrants, to Miami-Dade, to the American dream,” said a poster blank, next to the faces of Rubio, Salazar, Giménez and Díaz-Balart.
“Protect TPS (temporary protection status),” added a smaller sign, accompanied by the Venezuelan flag. La Valla, a light that alternated with other ads, located in the parking lot of the Palmetto Metro station, on the outskirts of the city, was financed by the Democratic Hispanic Caucus of the Miami-Dade County, an organization linked to the Democratic Party. Salazar, in statements to The new herald, He described the “Cheap propaganda in the Castro -style” propaganda.
A few days later, the poster was answered. “We have to be grateful,” said a New fencewith the portraits of Fidel and Raúl Castro, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Hugo Chávez, Daniel Ortega and Nicolás Maduro. They are “the true traitors,” says the text that accompanies the images, “to freedom, their people, to human rights.”
