Immigration priorities are warped

January 8, 1998

Every kid who wants to get out of Cuba should be taking batting practice, because baseball is their best ticket to the United States.

Cuban pitcher Livan Hernandez defected and became a World Series hero. His half-brother Orlando escaped by boat to the Bahamas last week, and was promptly offered a humanitarian visa by U.S. officials. Soon he'll be playing in the majors.

No other country can match our mania for professional sports and the way we idolize athletes. It's an obsession that warps our immigration priorities, among others.

A Cuban jock has a better chance of getting into the United States than a Cuban doctor, engineer or schoolteacher does. That's hard to justify, and one reason for the mixed reaction in South Florida to the special way Orlando Hernandez was treated.

No one disputes that El Duque, as he is known, was persecuted in Cuba—kicked off the national baseball team after Livan's defection. Likewise, no one doubts that Orlando would have faced prison or other retribution from the Castro government had he been sent back.

That's exactly what has happened to others who were not blessed with a 90 mph fastball.

Three years ago, the United States began repatriating Cuban rafters intercepted on their way to Florida, a move designed to deter another chaotic Mariel exodus. The policy shift was necessary and overdue.

For a long time the United States had used a double standard for Caribbean refugees, routinely turning away Haitian boat people while accepting most Cubans without question. Yet the dream they carried on their journeys was the same: to escape economic hardship caused by political repression.

The world is full of people in similar grim predicaments. The United States cannot absorb them all, but it makes room each year for a fixed number from each country.

Exceptions to the rules are commonly made for sports stars. Ballplayers are always welcome. So are tennis prodigies and ice dancers and champion weight lifters.

These aren't political activists; they're jocks looking for a payday. Nothing wrong with that. Unfortunately, the same opportunity cannot be promised to everyone who wants to come here. It's just not possible.

Every year, 20,000 U.S. entry visas are offered in Havana, and the demand far outstrips the supply. El Duque turned down his special visa and is instead headed for Costa Rica, a move that allows him to negotiate more fruitfully with American baseball clubs. Soon he'll be rich, and good for him.

But I can't help thinking of a woman I met near Havana a few years ago. She lived in a small apartment with her husband, children and mother. Though she expressed no interest in moving to Miami, the woman had big-league credentials.

She couldn't throw a slider, but she was as valuable as any athlete for whom we've rolled out the red carpet.

This woman was an eye surgeon. She specialized in caring for children and the elderly. For her skill and dedication, she was rewarded by the Cuban government with a salary equivalent to about $£ a month.

In this country the woman would be wealthy, of course. In this country she could afford $£ for a daiquiri.

Still, she didn't speak of leaving Havana; she had her family and patients to think about.

But I'm wondering what would happen if she changed her mind; if she and her relatives ended up stranded on a Bahamian island, like Hernandez and his friends. I wonder whether anyone in Washington would make a fuss, or even notice.

I know visas are scarce, but maybe they'd let her use El Duque's. If not her, then maybe somebody like her. Somebody without a sports agent leading them to freedom.

The War on Drugs

Justice deposes the ruling king of cocaine wars

June 4, 1985

Say farewell to one of Dade County's most treacherous outlaws. His name is Conrado Valencia Zalgado, but he is better known as El Loco.

He was the original cocaine cowboy—a drug runner, machine gunner, bond jumper, high roller, master of disguise. In his prime, he made Pacino's Scarface look like Tommy Tune, but now Conrado's day is passed, his luck evaporated.

On May 22, a Dade County judge ordered El Loco to prison for the next century or so, thus closing a wild saga in our cavalcade of crime. For once, the good guys actually won.

Valencia was the bullet-headed, bare-chested maniac who hung from a speeding Audi and fired a submachine gun at rival coke peddlers on the Florida Turnpike Extension six years ago. When the cops caught up with the car, they found a dead Colombian named Jaime in the trunk.

Conrado, of course, professed total surprise.

Three months later, the late Jaime's friends retaliated, blasting two of El Loco's soldiers in the infamous Dadeland Massacre.

South Florida's image never fully recovered from that summer of 1979, and the torrent of national publicity that followed. Those of us who covered the cocaine wars imagined Dodge City reborn—each day seemed to bring a new atrocity, a new corpse (35 drug killings in one six-month stretch).

Along with their precious powder, the Colombians imported an astounding brand of violence. The crimes were almost impossible to solve—suspects and victims alike possessed an impenetrable array of fake names and phony passports. Among these alien gangsters, El Loco was a king.

After the turnpike shootout, he was charged with attempted murder and tossed in jail, but not for long. Conrado came up with the proverbial cash in a briefcase—$105,000 to be exact—posted bond and immediately disappeared.

He moved his family and his cocaine network to Los Angeles, where he became a laid-back Valley guy. He began calling himself Max, and cruised the Topanga Hills in a red 1948 DeSoto convertible (vanity tags, of course). He was having a swell time until some smart cops went through his garbage and found a phone bill with lots of calls to Miami.

From then on, El Loco's days were numbered. One summer night in 1982, Conrado Valencia opened the door to a girlfriend's apartment and wound up sucking on a gun barrel. A Los Angeles policeman was on the other end.

A few days later Metro-Dade detective Al Lopez and I went to California to see the legendary Loco. He was clanging around the Los Angeles County Jail in body manacles, and he was in a crummy mood. The cops out there had thrown the book at him; the cops back in Dade County were waiting their turn. El Loco didn't want to talk. Not to me, not to Lopez, not to anybody.

A California judge gave Conrado 30 years in prison, and last month he returned to Miami to face, at long last, the charges from the Turnpike shootout. He was convicted swiftly and on May 22, acting Circuit Judge Norman Gerstein sentenced "Jose Ramon Ruiz" (one of Conrado's many aliases) to 125 years.

Even if Loco escapes, which is always a possibility, he will find a different world awaiting him. The bloodiest era of the cocaine cowboys seems to be over, and flamboyant enforcers are less in demand. The word's gotten back to South America: Low profile means more profit.

True, cocaine is more plentiful now than in the summer of 1979, but at least the malls and highways are a little safer. These days most drug killers are polite enough to do their work in private.

Maybe that's the best we can hope for.

Adios, Conrado. Don't bother to write.