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Rudy Giuliani apparently cares more about using little Elian Gonzalez's terrible plight for his own political purposes than talking about issues that really matter to residents of the State of New York.
Elian is the 6-year-old boy who through no fault of his own was shipwrecked off the coast of Florida, lost his mother, and has fallen into the middle of an international custody battle. Now the Mayor's aides say Mr. Giuliani is considering inviting Elian to New York to stand with him in the spotlight during our city's millennium celebrations. If the Mayor and his people succeed in getting Elian here for New Year's Eve, they will have literally dropped the ball.
This is a political year for Mr. Giuliani. It's one thing for him to arrest homeless people in an attempt to boost his Senate candidacy. But it's quite another to take an innocent child who lost his mother and is away from his father this Christmas and put him in a terrifying situation, on stage, in front of millions of people.
How would any parent react to their child being used without their permission in a blatant attempt to boost the Mayor's hopes for higher office? Does Rudy Giuliani have no shame in seeking to satisfy his own ambitions?
If the mayor wants to raise funds in Miami or Union City for his campaign, then showing off Elian around the city makes sense. Yet in taking advantage of a boy too young to decide what is in his own best interests, Mr. Giuliani risks demonstrating to voters around the state that he's more interested in meddling in international affairs than in discussing issues they care about such as education, health care, and Social Security.
Mr. Giuliani's grandstanding certainly won't resolve the Cuban question and may help launch a new wave of Cuban immigrants exercising what an aide to the mayor called their "right to choose" freedom. It is abundantly clear under our bilateral agreement with Cuba that we have no other option but to return anyone found on the high seas who has left that country illegally.
By playing political games with little Elian, we risk provoking the Cuban government into annulling our immigration agreement and letting another flood of boat people come to our shores that might surpass the tens of thousands who arrived in 1994 and 1995. It's just not fair to use this innocent boy to give false promise to desperate Cuban refugees by violating the law.
Instead, in the spirit of the holidays, we should invite Elian's father to come pick up his son with no conditions. If that can't be done for any reason, I'd be glad to take Elian back to Cuba myself.
My suggestion to the mayor would be to focus on issues that matter more to the folks back home instead of demagoguing a delicate international matter. If Rudy Giuliani truly wants to show his sympathy for the challenges faced by immigrant children, why not invite a Haitian or Kosovar kid from New York to be his guest of honor?
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