Why are we doing this?
I know why Trump put in place all the draconian policies that have now forced Cubans to try to emigrate to the US in massive numbers. But why are they still in place? This article doesn’t adequately provide an answer, particularly since many of the refugees now assembling at the southern border are Cubans.
Living conditions in Cuba under Communist rule have long been precarious, but today, deepening poverty and hopelessness have set off the largest exodus from the Caribbean island nation since Fidel Castro rose to power over half a century ago.
The country has been hit by a one-two-punch of tighter U.S. sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic, which eviscerated one of Cuba’s lifelines — the tourism industry. Food has become even more scarce and more expensive, lines at pharmacies with scant supplies begin before dawn and millions of people endure daily hourslong blackouts.
Over the last year, nearly 250,000 Cubans, more than 2 percent of the island’s 11 million population, have migrated to the United States, most of them arriving at the southern border by land, according to U.S. government data.
Even for a nation known for mass exodus, the current wave is remarkable — larger than the 1980 Mariel boatlift and the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis combined, until recently the island’s two biggest migration events.
But while those movements peaked within a year, experts say this migration, which they compare to a wartime exodus, has no end in sight and threatens the stability of a country that already has one of the hemisphere’s oldest populations.
The avalanche of Cubans leaving has also become a challenge for the United States. Now one of the highest sources of migrants after Mexico, Cuba has become a top contributor to the crush of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border, which has been a major political liability for President Biden and which the administration considers a serious national security issue.
“The numbers for Cuba are historic, and everybody recognizes that,” said a senior State Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “That said, more people are migrating globally now than they ever have been and that trend is certainly bearing out in our hemisphere, too.”
Why did this happen? Wingnuts, of course, specifically Cuban American wingnuts who evidently want Cubans to suffer:
To appeal to Cuban American voters in South Florida, the Trump administration discarded President Barack Obama’s policy of engagement, which included restoring diplomatic relations and increasing travel to the island. President Donald J. Trump replaced it with a “maximum pressure” campaign that ratcheted up sanctions and severely limited how much cash Cubans could receive from their families in the United States, a key source of revenue.
“This is not rocket science: If you devastate a country 90 miles from your border with sanctions, people will come to your border in search of economic opportunity,” said Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser under Mr. Obama and was the point person on talks with Cuba.
Apparently, Biden has been moving slowly to repeal this because he’s held hostage by New Jersey’s Robert Menendez, a corrupt Democrat who would not hesitate to tank Biden’s entire agenda is he doesn’t get his way. Menendez is Cuban American and also apparently wants to see Cubans suffer for some reason. This article does not spell out exactly why he is vetoing normalization but whatever it is, it’s causing the border crisis to be worse than it needs to be. Most Cubans would rather stay home — if they can eat.
There has been a tiny bit of rapprochement:
While any significant rollback of sanctions remains off the table, the two governments are engaged in efforts to address the extraordinary migration surge.
Washington recently announced that it would restart consular services in Havana in January and issue at least 20,000 visas to Cubans next year in line with longstanding agreements between the two nations, which officials hope will dissuade some people from trying to make dangerous journeys to the United States.
Havana has agreed to resume accepting flights from the United States of Cubans who are deported, another move to try to discourage migration. The Biden administration has also reversed the cap on money that Cuban Americans are allowed to send to relatives and licensed a U.S. company to process the wire transfers to Cuba.
Cubans migrate to the US because, unlike any other group of refugees, they are fast tracked to residency as political refugees. If they put their feet on US land, they get to stay. I can only assume that this migration is, therefore, supported by Cuban American Republicans because they want these people to come to America. (At least Menendez doesn’t want to build a wall for everyone but Cubans…) The people who push the Great Replacement Theory idea that Democrats want more immigrants because they believe they will vote for Democrats, actually seem to be doing what they accuse the Democrats of doing. Surprise.
Are they really that self-serving? (The answer is obvious.) Evidently, they hate the Cuban regime so much they are willing to make actual Cubans’ lives so miserable that they will completely depopulate the country. How cruel can you get?
The floodgates opened last year, when Nicaragua stopped requiring an entrance visa for Cubans. Tens of thousands of people sold their homes and belongings and flew to Managua, paying smugglers to help them make the 1,700-mile journey by land to the U.S. border.
Katrin Hansing, an anthropologist at the City University of New York who is on sabbatical on the island, noted that the soaring migration figures do not account for the thousands who have left for other countries, including Serbia and Russia.
“This is the biggest quantitative and qualitative brain drain this country has ever had since the revolution,” she said. “It’s the best and the brightest and the ones with the most energy.”
The departure of many younger, working-age Cubans augurs a bleak demographic future for a country where the average life expectancy of 78 is higher than for the rest of the region, experts said. The government already can barely afford the meager pensions the country’s older population relies on.
The hemorrhaging of Cubans from their homeland is nothing short of “devastating,” said Elaine Acosta González, a research associate at Florida International University. “Cuba is depopulating.”
It’s so sad…
Just a few years ago, the country’s future seemed far different. With the Obama administration loosening restrictions on travel to Cuba, American tourists pumped dollars into the island’s fledgling private sector.
I would love to know why this hasn’t blown back on the Republicans in Florida, who have long depended on the Cuban population for its electoral success. Are all the Florida Cuban Americans ok with this? I guess so.
I don’t blame people for leaving Cuba under these circumstances. And I don’t personally have a problem with granting them asylum either, although I would certainly think that others coming from similar circumstances should have an equal claim. But the politics of this whole thing are complicated and frankly inexplicable.
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