Globe Trot: Obama ends visa exemptions for fleeing Cubans

CUBA: President Barack Obama ended yesterday the “wet foot, dry foot” policy begun in the Bill Clinton era allowing those escaping Castro’s Cuba to stay in the country once they reached U.S. soil. Thousands perished in sea crossings and more than 100,000 Cubans were granted sanctuary in the United States under the policy. But President Clinton actually upended the procedure in 2000, making a deal with Fidel Castro by sending 6-year-old Elian Gonzales back to Cuba on a legal technicality. Gonzales had been brought ashore near Miami after his mother died in an ocean crossing.

SYRIA: U.S. special operations forces carried out a ground raid this week deep in the heart of ISIS territory.

The number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq and Syria stands at 30, at least, and is little noted.

UNITED STATES: Despite a rocky Senate hearing this week, Secretary of State–designee Rex Tillerson “did well enough and will be confirmed,” according to the word on Capitol Hill. What I believe will become apparent with his likely confirmation is the silenced voice of evangelicals in the post-election Trump era. Groups that spent lots of money and effort when it came to the Boy Scouts adopting a pro-gay policy said nothing on that question, even though Tillerson was one of the policy’s architects, as the Boy Scouts’ executive director. And neither they nor conservative senators have pressed Tillerson on issues of religious freedom and globalizing the current State Department LGBT agenda.

There’s growing concern over whether President-elect Donald Trump will appoint an ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom to combat proliferating religious conflict around the globe.

President Obama gave a moving tribute to Vice President Joe Biden yesterday, ending with a surprise presentation of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

JAPAN: The 17th century samurai repeatedly subjected Christians to torture and executions, not trusting apostates to remain so, and their law forbidding Christianity remained in effect for 200 years. Japanese-American artist Mako Fujimura (WORLD’s 2005 Daniel of the Year), a consultant on the newly released film about the era, Silence, found modern-day lessons in Japanese persecution: “Was it possible that God hid something beneath Japanese culture that we in America need today?”