Please join us in asking Washington to stop encouraging Cuban medical professionals in Africa to desert their posts.

November 26, 2014

Please join us in asking Washington to stop encouraging Cuban medical professionals in Africa to desert their posts.

Minnesota Cuba Committee
Despite the well-deserved praise Cuba has received for its humanitarian response to the Ebola crisis, the United States still has in place something called the Cuban Medical Professional Parole program which encourages international Cuban medical workers to defect to the United States, offering them special status that is awarded to no one else.

This program has always been shameful and it is even more so now. Please write to your Congressional representatives and ask them to urge President Obama to stop this program at once.

The Minnesota Cuba Committee has sent the attached letter to its congressional representatives. It is also reproduced below. Please feel free to use it or change it as you see fit. You can look up contact information for your representatives here.

Draft letter

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Re: Ebola and Cuban Medical Professional Parole program

Since the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic, Cuba has been widely recognized as being at the forefront of humanitarian efforts to aid the African countries most affected by the disease. A headline in the Washington Post on October 4 read, “In the medical response to Ebola, Cuba is punching far above its weight.”

Secretary of State John Kerry singled out the Cuban government’s effort on October 17 when he said, “Cuba, a country of just 11 million people, has sent 165 health professionals and it plans to send nearly 300 more.” The New York Times Editorial Board on October 19 said “Cuba stands to play the most robust role among the nations seeking to contain the virus,” adding that“Cuba’s contribution … should be lauded and emulated.” On October 21, the U.S. government, according to the Times, announced it “welcomed the opportunity to collaborate with Cuba” in providing medical aid to West Africa.

No doubt you have read and heard similar comments. A list of related articles is attached to this letter.

Our government, however, continues to maintain a robust campaign, known as the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) program, that, amazingly, encourages Cuban medical professionals to abandon their missions and defect to the United States.

According to the U.S. Department of State, the program began in 2006 under President George W. Bush, although Cuba has been sending medical aid missions to Africa since 1963. The driving force behind the 2006 program was, according to the Wall Street Journal, begun by a “staunchly anti-Castro Cuban exile [who] has characterized Cuba’s policy of sending health workers abroad as ‘human trafficking’.” Under this program, any overseas Cuban medical professional can apply for asylum at any US embassy. Once accepted, they receive a visa and are guaranteed permanent residence in the United States. This program is unique to overseas Cuban medical professionals. No other occupational group from any other country is treated similarly.

As of 2011, however, although the CMPP program had attracted 1,574 Cuban professionals, they actually represented only 1.89% of the total, giving the lie, it would seem, to any claims of “trafficking.”

As Greg Grandin says recently in a blog for The Nation: The US “actively works to dilute the effectiveness of Cuba’s overseas medical assistance, putting its outdated Cold War obsession with Cuba . . . ahead of the basic healthcare needs of some of the world’s poorest people“.

Most recently, on November 16, the New York Times Editorial Board called for an end to the CMPP “brain drain,” saying that of all “Washington’s failed policies toward Cuba and the embargo, it . . . is particularly hard to justify.”

This shameful program must end.

Do we want to risk being known as the only country in the world that sabotaged humanitarian efforts to end the Ebola crisis?

The CMPP program is antithetical to the cooperation with Cuba in fighting Ebola that the administration says it is willing to pursue. Why? Because if taken to its logical extreme, the endgame for the CMPP program would see all 365 current Cuban aid workers abandon their Ebola-fighting posts and defect to the United States, thereby condemning untold numbers of Africans to Ebola deaths.

In short, the CMPP program makes no logical sense with respect to the stated goals of the U.S. – i.e., fighting Ebola and cooperating with Cuba in doing so. The CMPP program hardly serves the larger US concern of establishing and maintaining good relations with various countries when it is trying to undermine efforts (involving Cuban medical aid) to promote better public health in those countries.

We understand that responsibility for the CMPP rests solely with the Executive Department, but we are asking you as well as the rest of the Minnesota delegation to urge the President to rescind this shameful program at a time when Africa desperately needs medical help from any quarter.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

References to Cuba, the U.S. Embargo and Cuba’s medical mission to fight Ebola

1.http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/20/opinion/cubas-impressive-role-on-ebola.html?ref=opinion&_r=1&assetType=opinion

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