A boy taken to a foreign country by his mother, who dies. A father who wants to bring the boy back to their original home.
It’s the Elian Gonzalez case, right? The one about the Cuban boy that sparked such bitter outrage in America and lost Florida (and the 2000 elections) for Al Gore?
Well, no. This time it’s the Sean Goldman case, and the shoe is on the other foot. Sean’s been living in Brazil since 2004, when his mother took him there for a “two-week vacation” and then stayed. She remarried, then died. Sean’s father wanted to bring him back to America. Sean’s relatives in Brazil fought to keep him there.
The result in both cases is now the same: Boy is reunited with father and returned to home country. But somehow this time there’s not the same outrage from the American public. Strange, that. (The Brazilians, though, aren’t happy.)
A sidelight: Attorney General Eric Holder, then a deputy AG, was a key player in the Gonzalez case. (“I believe that reuniting Elian with his father is not only a matter of federal law. It is not a matter of immigration law. It is simply the right thing to do,” he said in 2000.)
And where is Elian Gonzalez now? He was six in 2000, he’s 15 now, and last year he joined the Communist Party. The house where he lived in Miami is now Casa Elian, a museum.