A group of about 100 Cuban doctors who fled to Colombia, and who are entitled to visas to enter the US, are being stalled by the Obama administration, even as open border policies permit unskilled laborers to flood in. Yesterday, they held a protest in Bogota to call attention to their plight.

The Cuban doctors had been stationed in Venezuela under a program dating to the 1960s in which Cuba sends medical professionals overseas as a moneymaking and political influence-buying mission. The doctors are paid very little by Cuba, which collects fees from the host countries for their services. Venezuela sends Cuba 92,000 barrels of oil a day, worth $3.2 billion a year, for instance.  This is the very definition of exploitation, of course.

To counter this Cuban program, the US in 2006 created a program to issue visas to Cuban doctors and thus deprive the regime of crucial funds, while addressing the looming domestic shortage of medical professionals. But the Obama administration, perhaps in an effort to improve relations with Cuba has stalled in issuing visas to the Cuban medics. Camilo Hernandez of AP writes:

About 100 Cuban doctors who deserted a medical mission in Venezuela and have been stranded for months in Colombia seeking entry into the U.S. staged a protest Saturday to draw attention to their plight.

The health care workers say they fear the delays in processing their visa requests under a 2006 program aimed at luring Cuba's medical talent could be a sign that President Barack Obama is seeking to end the incentive as part of his campaign to normalize relations with the communist island.

Wearing white doctor's coats and brandishing their diplomas, the Cuban medical workers gathered in a plaza in Kennedy, a working-class neighborhood built in the 1960s with funds from John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. Several described how widespread shortages and mistreatment in Venezuela is leading many to sneak across the border seeking a new start in the United States.

With many doctors retiring to avoid entanglement in the red tape and financial penalties of Obamacare, the US faces a serious doctor shortage. But it looks like the Obama administration values kowtowing to a communist dictatorship over the needs of the American people, and the existing regulations.

Hat tip: Jim Netolick