Hoy newspaper’s Coctelera column has a solution for the case of Kendry Morales, the star Cuban national baseball team player who defected in the hope of playing in the Major League Baseball. Kendry made his way to the Dominican Republic (how he entered the country is not explained), but his admission to the United States is said to now be dependent on the Dominican government granting him Dominican citizenship so he may travel on a Dominican passport to the United States. Reportedly, this is a process that could take a year to three years through regular channels.
In a feature on the matter, The Los Angeles Times says that Major League Baseball officials in the DR and the Angels have been trying to expedite the process and have asked President Fernandez to prepare a decree granting immediate citizenship.
The newspaper says that Fernandez is said to be fond of Cuban President Fidel Castro and might not be eager to do anything to antagonize him or encourage more Cubans to defect.
Coctelera has a better solution. “Wouldn’t it be easier, and more simple and even more convenient if the Major Leagues, the Anaheim Angels and even Morales himself write to President George Bush, who is more of a baseball fanatic than Leonel, and requested that he authorize the immediate admission of the athlete to US territory.” “And don’t tell me that Bush cannot get involved in Migration matters. Is the domestic influence of a statesman that ordered that Afghanistan can be attacked and Iraq invaded.”
He also commented that contrary to the statement in the Los Angeles Times that President Fernandez is close to Fidel Castro, the Dominican Republic abstained from voting on the resolution passed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva on human rights in Cuba. The columnist writes that if President Fernandez was so close to Fidel Castro, as the newspaper claims, the DR would have voted in Cuba’s favor and not abstained.
Miami’s Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald reported that Morales had crossed the Florida Straits on Saturday night on a boat with 18 other Cubans, including former baseball coach Orlando Chinea.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim has given him a US$3 million bonus, but he needs a passport.