A final feat

More than two years ago, President Obama announced plans to turn the page on a failed half-century freezeout with Cuba, and restore diplomatic ties with the Communist island. Thursday, with just seven days left in his second term, the President scotched the immigration policy that went hand in hand with that freezeout. What took so long? Under “wet foot, dry foot,” established more than 20 years ago, Cubans who landed in the U.S. got green cards, no matter how they arrived. It was itself a tightening of the initial Cold War policy that created a glide path to citizenship for any Cuban who managed to get off the island.

Which is to say, for more than 50 years, Cuban immigrants have been treated unlike anyone from any other country: as welcome to stay forever, simply by virtue of the fact that the country from which they fled is Communist.

Yes, under the Castro regime, human rights are an oxymoron, driving many people to want to escape. But the regime in Venezuela regularly abuses many of the same rights, and its people get no special treatment.

Haiti has never been a picnic, either. Yet thousands of people who left it on rickety boats after an early-’90s coup were not given dry towels, a hot meal and a path to citizenship — but bare cells in a Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The double standard is finally kaput. The only shame is that the new policy barely gets a chance to set foot in Obama’s America before Donald Trump will get the chance to pull the rug out.

He wouldn’t do that, would he?