1 Boy / 2 Nations.

Should 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez be returned to Cuba?

YES

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) made a reasonable decision in ruling that Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old boy who survived a trip across the Florida Straits, should be reunited with his father in Cuba.

Elian was one of 13 Cubans who were trying to cross from Cuba to Florida six weeks ago on a 17-foot aluminum powerboat when it capsized. Ten of those on board died, including his mother and stepfather. The boy clung to an inner tube for two days and was plucked from the Atlantic on Thanksgiving Day and brought ashore. He was immediately released into the custody of relatives in Miami--and just as quickly embraced as a pawn in the poisonous verbal contest between Fidel Castro's regime and its opponents in exile.

"This little boy, who has been through so much, belongs with his father," INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said. The White House quickly announced support for the decision.

Elian's relatives in Miami are appealing in federal court, as is their right. Some of their more militant supporters in Miami, decrying the prospect that the boy will be used as a "trophy" by Castro, have indicated they may try to disrupt efforts to reunite Elian with his father. That would be treating the boy as a trophy in a diplomatic struggle that predates his birth by years.

--EDITORIAL The New York Times

NO

This case has particular poignancy for me. I was 8 years old when Fidel Castro's tanks rolled through Havana. Thousands of families, including my own, considered making the ultimate sacrifice and shipping their children off to the United States. These families knew nothing about the life that their children would have in exile and did not know if they would ever see them again. Yet they had an unshakable belief: life in the United States would be far better than life in a Communist hell.

As things turned out, my mother and I were able to leave Cuba together in 1962. But about 14,000 children migrated alone to the U.S. under Operation Peter Pan, a program that provided visa waivers to children under 16.

Elian's father may be an exemplary parent. But he cannot divulge his true aspirations. Instead, he, as well as Elian's grandparents, seem to be kept busy attending rallies where the father reads prepared speeches denouncing the American government. Those of us who lived under Cuba's Communist regime are deeply suspicious. If the father could talk freely, we suspect that he too would choose to migrate to the United States.

The recently published Black Book of Communism documents that more than 15,000 Cubans have been murdered by the Castro regime, and more than 100,000 have been political prisoners. Are the liberals who so adamantly favor sending Elian back to Castro's Cuba certain that this is in Elian's interests and that this is what Elian's family wants? There is no room for error in this Solomonic decision.

--GEORGE J. BORJAS Professor of Public Policy Harvard University Times Op-Ed page