Record number of Cubans enter the United States
U.S. Customs and Border Protection have documented 224,607 Cubans left the island in Fiscal Year 2022. This is the latest in a series of large exoduses of Cuban refugees that began over six decades ago.
The main reason for this exodus is that Cuba is under communist rule. Political economist and demographer Nicholas Eberstadt in his 2003 monograph "Population Aspects of Communist Countries," found one of the features of these regimes is that communist governance generates "enormous streams of refugees, escapees fleeing from the new order, or driven out by some particular policy or practice promoted by the new regime." Cubans fled on rafts across the Florida Straits, in freedom flights, defected from sporting events, ballet troupes defected in Paris, and today many fly to Nicaragua, and trek through hundreds of miles of jungle to the U.S. Mexican border.
These refugees are fleeing Cuba today due to a number of factors: massive political repression following nationwide protests in July 2021, an economic crisis caused by failed communist central planning generating hyperinflation in the island, and the weaponization of migration from Cuba to the United States by the Castro dictatorship in order to generate a crisis to obtain concessions from Washington.
They also had help from their communist ally Daniel Ortega.
Managua announced on November 22, 2021 it would lift visa requirements for Cubans traveling to Nicaragua. This opened a new path for Cuban migrants to reach the United States, and created an even greater crisis on the U.S. Mexican border.
Repression worsens
Meanwhile Cubans continue to protest against the Castro dictatorship, and are subjected to systematic repression. At the same time Western democracies are financing the dictatorship. The main source of funding for Havana’s regime is not Russia or China, but the European Union, and now many Cubans fear that the Biden Administration is taking America down the same path.
Iran’s pro-democracy movement resonates with Cubans
Cubans joined Iranians at the 10/22/22 National Mall march to the White House.
Cubans witnessing the ongoing protests in Iran and around the world
condemning the brutal repression of the Islamist regime in Tehran, and
listening to Iran’s pro-democracy forces, find statements that resonate with their own demands to Washington and the European Union.
Cuban engineer and democratic opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas statement on the death of Cuban prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010: "We denounce all those governments and states in this continent and in the world together with the many institutions and persons that prefer a harmonious relationship with lies and oppression rather than open solidarity with the Cuban people. All are complicit with what is happening and what will happen." He was murdered together with the youth leader of the movement he founded, the Christian Liberation Movement, on July 22, 2012.
Iranian journalist and pro-democracy activist Masih Alinejad outside the United Nations in New York on September 21, 2022:
“I’m not asking any Western country to bring democracy for us. We the
people of Iran are brave enough to bring democracy for ourselves. We
don't want them to save us; we want them to stop saving the regime.”
The Christian Liberation Movement's “Eleven concrete actions to isolate the totalitarian and segregationist Cuban regime” drafted in the aftermath of the July 2021 national protests in Cuba mirror the demands listed by Iranian pro-democracy activists.
Yasmin Green in her article “Iran's Internet Blackouts Are Part of a Global Menace“ published in Wired on October 19, 2022 describes how dictatorships learn from each other with regards to controlling the internet and their nationals.
“As we keep our eyes trained on the developing situation in Iran, it is critical to acknowledge that it is not an isolated event. Even since the protests in Iran began, Cuba has cut access to the internet twice in response to protests over the government’s handling of the response to Hurricane Ian. Around the world, a troubling number of nations have severely curtailed internet freedom, including full shutdowns, as their default response to popular protests. The most repressive of these regimes learn from each other, sharing technology and in some cases even personnel to establish an ironclad grip on the web and their citizens.”
Both Iranians and Cubans are battling against brutal totalitarian regimes that are willing to do anything to hang on to power, including work together, and an international community that is too often complicit with these regimes.
Both peoples seek to isolate the dictatorship, end Western democracies financial support for these regimes, recognize the opposition, and bar these dictatorships from participating in international artistic, cultural, or sporting events.
Migration weaponized against the United States
Kelly M. Greenhill, an associate professor at Tufts University in her 2002 paper "Engineered Migration and the Use of Refugees as Political Weapons" described a pattern to use "coercive engineered migration" to create instability in the United States and gain leverage that was first established by Castro in the 1965 Camarioca crisis during the Johnson Administration, repeated in 1980 with the Mariel Crisis during the Carter Administration, and again in 1994 during the Clinton Administration with the balsero crisis. In 2015 an air bridge was set up from Cuba to Central America for thousands of Cubans to travel through to the U.S. Mexican border, and over 123,000 Cubans entered the U.S. during the Obama Administration’s 2014-2016 Cuba thaw.
Representatives raise concerns and ask questions about changes in Cuba policy
Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart (FL-25), Maria Elvira Salazar (FL-27), and Carlos A. Gimenez (FL-26) have expressed concern about and raised questions about changes in U.S.-Cuba policy in a letter dated October 24, 2022 and addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas.
On October 18, 2022, the State Department and USAID announced “$2 million in humanitarian assistance to support shelter needs for the most vulnerable communities who have been affected by the devastating impacts of Hurricane Ian in Cuba,” to be funded from the International Disaster Assistance (IDA) account. According to the announcement, the “humanitarian assistance will be delivered directly to the Cuban people – not through the Cuban government – through trusted, independent organizations operating in the country with a long presence in hurricane-affected communities.” The justification cited for providing this aid was attributed to Hurricane Ian damaging “an estimated 68,370 homes, of which 15,705 have completely or partially collapsed, and another 17,866 have completely lost their roofs. Additionally, the hurricane damaged or destroyed an estimated 9,000 hectares of crops in Artemisa, decreasing already limited food supplies.” Additionally, USAID stated that 43 sets of “firefighting equipment” were provided to a training station in Havana, and an additional 57 sets will be delivered at an unspecified date. According to reports, the Matanzas fire, the disaster for which IDA-funded firefighting equipment was provided, was extinguished by August 9, 2022. USAID explained that the IDA-funded firefighting equipment would replenish supplies that were damaged in combating the Matanzas fire, as none of it would be delivered in time to address that disaster.
In the meantime, we are deeply troubled that the Biden Administration has informed us that it will begin immediately returning Cuban nationals who escaped totalitarian Cuba, and that it is initiating monthly flights for the purpose. This decision seems to be a reversal from President Biden’s statement a month ago, that “there are fewer and fewer immigrants coming from Central America than from Mexico. It’s a totally different circumstance… What's on my watch now is Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, and the ability to send them back to those states is not rational.” The Cuban people endure severe oppression and egregious human rights abuses. Hundreds of activists, including children, remain imprisoned for daring to speak out against the regime. Certainly the situation in Cuba has not improved in the intervening month since the President’s comment, especially in the wake of the devastation from Hurricane Ian that prompted the announcement of $2 million in humanitarian aid. In fact, returning Cuban nationals to Cuba at this time would seem to be even less “rational” today.
On October 19, 2022 Politico published an advertisement placed by the Cuban exile community that explained the ongoing exodus and how it could worsen. "Cubans are fleeing from a vicious regime that does not allow them to have free and productive lives in Cuba. If they see the regime empowered by US government donations they will migrate to the US in even greater numbers." Some in Washington believe that providing resources to the Castro regime will lessen migration from the island, but the opposite is true. If Cubans on the island see the United States legitimizing and subsidizing the Cuban dictatorship, they will lose hope that regime change is possible, and see emigrating as their only option for a better life. There has been a historic correlation between mass exoduses of Cubans to the United States, and episodes of rapprochement between Washington and Havana.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment