No more automatic residence

This new immigration policy is one of the first Obama policies with which I’ve ever agreed:

President Barack Obama is ending a longstanding immigration policy that allows any Cuban who makes it to U.S. soil to stay and become a legal resident, a senior administration official said Thursday.

The repeal of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy is effective immediately, according the official. The decision follows months of negotiations focused in part on getting Cuba to agree to take back people who had arrived in the U.S.

It was always a stupid and irresponsible policy. Cubans aren’t Americans, they’re one-issue foreign nationals who have ceaselessly attempted to embroil the USA in policies that are not in the national interest, and none of them should have been given residence, let alone citizenship, in the first place.

Since October 2012, more than 118,000 Cubans have presented themselves at ports of entry along the border, according to statistics published by the Homeland Security Department. During the 2016 budget year, which ended in September, a five-year high of more than 41,500 people came through the southern border. An additional 7,000 people arrived between October and November.

Permitting Cubans to immigrate to the USA was far more harmful to Americans than simply invading and overthrowing Castro would have been. It was a cowardly half-step, and disastrous, like most policies based on virtue-signaling.