Carl Hiaasen - Kick Ass - Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

For the Royal Majesty, it was the third time in two weeks that it had picked up Cuban refugees near the Florida coast. The first groups totaled 11 persons (including a young child), and the passenger liner was rewarded with a fine of $33,000.

The heavy penalties are meant to discourage alien smugglers, not humanitarians. But the practical effect of the INS action against the Royal Majesty is to deter all private American vessels from rushing to the aid of immigrants who face possible death on the water from starvation, sunstroke or drowning.

Whatever one's feelings about this country's screwed-up immigration rules, few would argue that a boat captain should ignore anyone's desperate cry for help, including refugees. Yet that's what is happening. Many rafters have reported that they were spotted—and passed—by several commercial and private vessels before finally being picked up.

It's not surprising, given the harshness of the INS fines. Maybe the cruise companies can afford a few thousand dollars here and there, but many shipowners can't.

Ironically, the oldest of maritime laws require sea captains to assist those in danger or distress. The INS seems to be encouraging just the opposite. It's nuts, like something from a Joseph Heller novel.

The awful consequence is that innocents will probably perish, if they haven't already, because some skippers are afraid to do the right thing. How anyone can turn his back on a child in a drifting raft or a wallowing old sailboat is almost beyond comprehension, but it happens.

The case of the Royal Majesty has its own sour irony. For years the cruise lines have been under fire for surreptitiously dumping garbage in the ocean, but the feds have seldom cracked down with the tough fines provided by law. Now comes a cruise ship captain who nobly attempts to save a few lives—and the government instantly hammers him for $57,000. Some message.

Although INS fines can be appealed, many boat owners don't have the time, patience or money to fight the bureaucracy. It seems a simpler matter—and one of basic human compassion—for the Clinton administration to revise immigration policy to allow rescues at sea, without fear of penalty for the rescuer.

A $3,000-a-head fine is certainly justified for alien smugglers who prey on Cubans, Haitians and other poor immigrants. The trade in human cargo is lucrative and sometimes brutal in Florida waters, and we need strict laws.

But it's indecent to punish honest captains and shipowners for undertaking legitimate rescue missions, often at considerable risk and expense. When a man is sick or parched or delirious from the sun, when he's in a sinking raft surrounded by sharks, there's only one thing to do.

You save him. You don't ask to see a visa.

"Those who dare ignore our new appeal will tremble with fear at the violence of our actions."

That ominous little valentine was mailed from Alpha 66, the militant anti-Castro group, to an organization that ships humanitarian supplies to Cuba.

Alpha 66 doesn't want food and medicine sent to the island. The letter was a warning. The FBI says it's investigating.

Nothing will come of it. Nothing ever does. Few, least of all Fidel Castro, "tremble with fear" at the mention of Alpha 66. The group is good at threats, but not so good at actual terrorism.

Sincerity isn't the issue; competence is. Alpha 66 is famous for botching missions. If Barney Fife were a freedom fighter, this is the bunch he would join.

On Feb. 6, several Alpha commandos found themselves adrift in an 18-foot outboard off Miami. The boat carried an impressive cache: shotguns, AK-47s, pistols, a .50-caliber machine gun and 25,000 rounds of ammunition.

Everything one would need for a seagoing assault on Cuba—except a boat mechanic.

In a now-familiar scenario, the disabled vessel was towed to port by bemused Coast Guardsmen, who took away the group's weapons. Alpha 66 later provided the press with differing versions of the "mission," all heroic.

Who knows what they were really doing. The notion of loading an arsenal on a puny 18-footer and heading for Cuba is almost too absurd to be believed. Doing it on a Sunday, when the waters off Key Biscayne are full of innocent boaters, is just plain reckless.

Granted, it's tough to maintain credibility after decades of paramilitary actions that could charitably be described as ineffective. Remember the mock invasion of Elliott Key, when armed Alpha 66-ers wound up captured by park rangers?

Episodes like that don't help the cause. The urge to vindicate one's self with new dramatics must be tempting. Plans abound, but the execution remains flawed.

Thirteen months ago, the Coast Guard grabbed a load of arms, including grenade launchers, from an Alpha 66 boat off Cuba. Last May, Customs agents followed another craft with engine trouble to a marina in the Middle Keys, where they confiscated grenades, pipe bombs and heavy weapons.

Perhaps the group needs to invest less on weaponry, and more on boat maintenance.

Another weak spot is public relations. After the embarrassing bust in May, Alpha leaders declared that the boat had been on a "military mission" against targets in Cuba. That would be a major violation of U.S. law.

So, at trial, the story changed from one of patriotic bravery to one of ignorance. Lawyers for the commandos said their clients had no clue how the guns and explosives got stowed aboard their fishing boat. A Key West jury believed them.

Confusion also occurred last fall, after Alpha 66 warned that it would begin taking violent action against foreign tourists in Cuba.

The U.S. State Department condemned the manifesto and threatened federal prosecution. Alpha leaders asserted that attacks against visitors in Havana would be carried out not by Alpha's Miami wing, but by secret sympathizers on the island. As if that made it all right.

That the FBI tolerates such silliness proves that it doesn't take the group too seriously. But suppose a steering cable breaks on an explosive-laden Alpha 66 vessel, sending it crashing into innocent boaters in Government Cut. Given Alpha's checkered history, the scenario is not so farfetched.

The feds should either prosecute these guys, or buy them brand new Evinrudes.

In the torrent of reaction to President Clinton's strict new policy toward Cuban refugees, scarcely a word has been uttered about the Haitians.

The same politicians now bellowing in outrage about the interdiction of Cuban rafters made not a peep of protest when Clinton took the same step to halt the influx of boat people from Haiti.

Today, at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, more than 15,000 Haitians are held in miserable detention. It's essentially one of the world's largest prisons.

Except when there's a riot, as there was recently, the Haitian detainees are mostly forgotten by the press and politicians. That's partly because nobody has a good idea what to do with them, or what to do about Haiti.

Just like the Cubans, the Haitians fled an economic nightmare caused by repression, corruption and a harsh U.S. trade embargo.

Like the Cubans, the Haitians were so desperate that they set out for Florida in flimsy, overcrowded crafts. And, like the Cubans, many perished on the journey.

There are differences. The Haitians have no special immigration law giving them status in the United States. Their exile community is smaller, and much weaker in political clout, than that of Cuban Americans.

And finally, of course, Haitians are black. You will never see, in your lifetime, a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans on the floor of Congress demanding automatic asylum for Haitians fleeing the Cedras regime. Never.