Welcome to Cuba, Baby Gitmo

By Sidney Urquhart

The officer was beaming like an expectant father getting ready to pass out cigars. Maybe even Cuban cigars. "In the next 48 hours we will have the first migrant Haitian born in Guantanamo, which we are all kind of looking forward to," announced Brigadier General George H. Walls of the Marines last week. Right on schedule came the new arrival: a baby boy (6 lbs. 8 oz.) born to a 20-year-old Haitian woman. The infant raises a ticklish diplomatic issue: Are the children of Haitian refugees born on the Guantanamo ("Gitmo") Bay Naval Base entitled to U.S. citizenship? Absolutely not, insists the State Department, explaining that the base is on Cuban territory that the U.S. only leases. General Walls has been instructed to refer to the Haitians as "migrants." More than 50 other Haitian women on the base are pregnant.