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“They’re taking benefits from the American taxpayer to subsidize their life in another country.”

By Sally Kestin, Megan O'Matz and John Maines with Tracey Eaton in Cuba

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Cuban immigrants are cashing in on U.S. welfare and returning to the island, making a mockery of the decades-old premise that they are refugees fleeing persecution at home.

Some stay for months at a time — and the U.S. government keeps paying.

Cubans’ unique access to food stamps, disability money and other welfare is meant to help them build new lives in America. Yet these days, it’s helping some finance their lives on the communist island.

America’s open-ended generosity has grown into an entitlement that exceeds $680 million a year and is exploited with ease. No agency tracks the scope of the abuse, but a Sun Sentinel investigation found evidence suggesting it is widespread.

Fed-up Floridians are reporting their neighbors and relatives for accepting government aid while shuttling back and forth to the island, selling goods in Cuba, and leaving their benefit cards in the U.S. for others to use while they are away.

Some don’t come back at all. The U.S. has continued to deposit welfare checks for as long as two years after the recipients moved back to Cuba for good, federal officials confirmed.

Regulations prohibit welfare recipients from collecting or using U.S. benefits in another country. But on the streets of Hialeah, the first stop for many new arrivals, shopkeepers like Miguel Veloso hear about it all the time.

Veloso, a barber who has been in the U.S. three years, said recent immigrants on welfare talk of spending considerable time in Cuba — six months there, two months here. “You come and go before benefits expire,” he said.

 

 
Last edited by Bestworking
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The sense of entitlement is so ingrained that Cubans routinely complained to their local congressman about the challenge of accessing U.S. aid — from Cuba.

“A family member would come into our office and say another family member isn’t receiving his benefits,” said Javier Correoso, aide to former Miami Rep. David Rivera. “We’d say, ‘Where is he?’ They’d say, ‘He’s in Cuba and isn’t coming back for six months.’'

“They’re taking benefits from the American taxpayer to subsidize their life in another country.’”

One woman told Miami immigration attorney Grisel Ybarra that her grandmother and two great aunts came to Florida, got approved for benefits, opened bank accounts and returned to Cuba. Month after month, the woman cashed their government checks — about $2,400 each time — sending half to the women in Cuba and keeping the rest.

When a welfare agency questioned the elderly ladies’ 

whereabouts this summer, the woman turned to Ybarra, a Cuban American. She told Ybarra her grandmother refused to come back, saying: “With the money you sent me, I bought a home and am really happy in Cuba.”

Cubans on the island, Ybarra said, have a name for U.S. aid.

They call it “la ayuda.” The help.

Special status abused

Increasing openness and travel between the two countries have made the welfare entitlement harder to justify and easier to abuse. But few charges have been brought, and Congress and the Obama Administration have failed to address the problem even as the United States moves toward détente with Cuba.

Cubans’ extraordinary access to U.S. welfare rests on two pillars of special treatment: the ease with which they are admitted to the country, and America’s generosity in granting them public support.

Cubans are allowed into the U.S. even if they arrive without permission and are quickly granted permanent residency under the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. They’re assumed to be refugees without having to prove persecution.

They’re immediately eligible for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income or SSI, cash assistance for impoverished seniors and disabled younger people.

 Read more:http://www.sun-sentinel.com/us-cuba-welfare-benefits/sfl-us-cuba-welfare-benefits-part-1-htmlstory.html

Last edited by Bestworking

What's funny, all these leeches will claim that they are a "proud" and "industrious" people! All of them, up to and including the muzzies will make that claim. But they are not too proud to rob the American taxpayer, while our so called "leaders" sit back and allow it.

Increasing openness and travel between the two countries have made the welfare entitlement harder to justify and easier to abuse. But few charges have been brought, and Congress and the Obama Administration have failed to address the problem even as the United States moves toward détente with Cuba.

Imagine the money we'd have to help our own, legal, truly needy citizens if we weren't giving it to every pos from every ****hole country, and every s***h*** country in the world, and every trifling gimmethat in this country! We'd have trillions to use to fight disease, see to the welfare of abused children, help the elderly, and all sorts of other important things.

Bestworking posted:

Imagine the money we'd have to help our own, legal, truly needy citizens if we weren't giving it to every pos from every ****hole country, and every s***h*** country in the world, and every trifling gimmethat in this country! We'd have trillions to use to fight disease, see to the welfare of abused children, help the elderly, and all sorts of other important things.

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When you talk to yo' mama and yo' chillen, do you use those asterisks or do you just let fly with the filthy gutter language they stand for?

What gutter language professor DA? Typical of a stinking lefty, try to divert from the message by going after the messenger. No, I don't use "gutter language" as you call it, with my children, never have. I'm sure your little "genius" heard plenty of it from you. I didn't use it with my Mother either. But I loved and respected my parents, and I love and respect my children and husband, and they have never done anything that would even remotely earn them the labels the asterisks stand for. You lefties don't deserve a bit of respect. You sure pretend to be torn up by those asterisks. I can't imagine why, because nasty pieces of "work" like the democrits have people calling them those things on a daily basis, and since they don't mind calling people worse, lying about them, and calling for violence against people exercising their rights, they deserve what they get and more. Now that you understand that I don't give a flying flip about you and your pretend problem with my "language", I'll go back to the subject of the thread, which is the disgraceful giving of money to these POS from cuba and other ******** countries, and the lazy good for nothing gimmethats in the US that the stinking demoslops pay for their vote.

Last edited by Bestworking
Bestworking posted:
direstraits posted:

Best, Condie is attacking your asterisks and not much else, especially the content. That's all he's got.

Exactly. He thinks for some reason I give a flip about what he thinks. BTW beternnun, you need to learn how to spell.

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Actually no.  I have just been too busy with more significant matters, such as my destruction of your ill-informed comments on the NYPD's Muslim surveillance program. See "Piers Morgan--Trump is Right" topic.

 

 

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