Cubans Flock to Florida

 Puerto Ricans Too 

      The former Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis Fortuno, sometimes lamented both his nation's similarities and its contrasts with Cuba. Both countries are large Caribbean islands that the U. S. wrested from Spain...along with the Philippines and Guam...after an easy victory in the 1898 Spanish-American War. But Cuba's fight for independence spawned the victorious Cuban Revolution in 1959. Cuba's hard-earned and bitterly maintained sovereignty contrasts somewhat with the Puerto Rican path because Puerto Rico is a Territory of the United States. Puerto Ricans are citizens of the U. S. and are represented in the Puerto Rican-friendly U. S. Congress. By contrast, the U. S., and especially the U. S. Congress, strives on a daily basis to annihilate Cuba with a vast litany of anti-Cuba but pro-Cuban exile laws, including a fierce embargo since 1962 that has tried to destroy Revolutionary Cuba. Meanwhile, all those startling contrasts brings us back around to two more striking similarities -- both Cuba and Puerto Rico are in dire financial straits and both Cuba and Puerto Rico are seeing tens of thousands of their citizens flock to over-whelmed Florida each month. Cubans, and only Cubans, are home free with financial and political incentives the moment they touch U. S. soil; Puerto Ricans are home free instantaneously because they are already U. S. citizens. All that convoluted mayhem caused Governor Fortuno, when Puerto Rico recently couldn't make a payment on its $72 billion debt, to muse: "Sometimes I envy Cuba. Cuba faces the embargo. Puerto Rico faces the Hedge Fund billionaires. And the Hedge Funders are worse than the embargo." Much of Puerto Rico's debt is owed to Hedge Fund billionaires, for sure. Despite 5-and-6-Star hotels along with miles of yachts along its shorelines, Puerto Rico has been forced to close schools and other essentials as it tries to pay its debts while it also begs the U. S. Congress to help out. So, yes, there are many contrasts and similarities between Cuba and Puerto Rico, although some would say that the U. S. embargo of Cuba, heading toward its 6th decade, is even worse than the greedy U. S. "Hedge Funders." 

       In 2013 Fortuno barely lost his bid for re-election as governor to Alejandro Garcia Padilla. Both are young lawyers. Fortuno graduated from Georgetown University and then the University of Virginia Law School; he has been mentioned as a possible future Republican presidential or VP candidate. Current Governor Garcia Padilla, a Democrat, was educated in Puerto Rico. The two men agree on one thing: Wall Street billionaires are largely responsible for Puerto Rico's overwhelming and ongoing financial problems.

Governor Garcia Padilla wants massive U. S. help. 

Cuba & Puerto Rico in the heart of the Caribbean.

       This week CNN, obsessed with the U. S. presidential race, said that 67,000 Puerto Ricans are re-located to Florida each month, mainly to the 14 areas depicted above. With its 29 electoral votes, Florida is always pivotal in deciding the next U. S. president. CNN reported that both the Democrats and Republicans are sending squads of recruiters to Florida to court the Puerto Rican votes even ahead of the Cuban votes.

         As this Pantera Digita.com map points out, Puerto Ricans, especially in Florida and the New York area, have long been collective political and economic forces in the U. S., and that power is increasing.

The Hispanic voters in key states could decide the election.

       Between 2000 and 2012 potential Hispanic voters in key states jumped 76% but the biggest increases in Cubans and Puerto Ricans have occurred recently. Financial problems are causing Puerto Ricans to move their citizenships to the U. S. mainland. President Obama's recent detente with Cuba is expediting Cuban migrants who fear that the special legal privileges available only to Cubans may end.

       On the expensive air-land route to the U.S.-Mexican border, thousands of Cubans like the ones above have been stranded in totally fed-up Latin American nations. Cuba, pressured by these nations to speak out more strongly, has now done so. The Cuban Foreign Ministry said, "Cubans enticed and bribed to leave the island by U. S. laws that guarantee them financial, economic, political and citizenship privileges totally unavailable to all non-Cubans shocks the world with its acute discriminatory and undemocratic fallouts. Those privileges start the very moment Cubans, and only Cubans, touch U. S. soil. Cuba as well as the U. S. get hourly complaints but the U. S., the world nuclear superpower, feels it doesn't have to do anything about it." 

       After the expensive airplane flights to Latin American nations to begin the final land route to the U.S.-Mexican border, thousands of Cubans like these have been stranded for months in unsanitary and taxing conditions because countries like Nicaragua and Costa Rica have closed their borders in efforts to stop the unwanted incursions. Because of the Cold War Cuban Adjustment Act, any Cuban who touches U. S. soil is home-free with enticing rewards courtesy of U. S. taxpayers and U. S. laws designed to hurt Cuba. In the last 10 months, 46,500 Cubans have touched U. S. soil in that manner. That compares to just over 43,000 in the previous 12 months and 24,000 in 2014. The sharp uptick dates to December of 2014 when President Obama announced his plans to normalize relations with Cuba. Human traffickers reacted by putting out word that Cubans needed to immediately head to the U. S. because Obama planned to end the special Cuban privileges known as Wet Foot/Dry Foot. Obama can't change the law because it is locked in by Congress. So offshoots linger as reported this week by Reuters and other non-U. S. news agencies.

       Colombia is the latest Latin American nation overwhelmed and fed-up with the influx of Cuban migrants taxing their patience and resources. The Colombian government has deported some of them back to Cuba to discourage the Wet Foot/Dry Foot enticements. The Colombian town of Turbo is dealing with 1,297 Cubans stuck there for months on their way to the Mexican border. Colombia says 300 of them are children under 14 and the group includes 11 pregnant women. Colombia is trying to deport them back to Cuba or "to the last country they were in since leaving Cuba." Colombia says that "Ecuador is usually the last country." 

      Colombia's Foreign Minster is Maria Angela Holguin. Like all Latin American Foreign Ministers, she is fed-up with America's discriminatory Cuban laws that "infringe against all of us. I believe the UN vote is about 192-to-2 against them. Well, it is unanimity throughout the Caribbean and Latin America. Where does democracy, fairness and decency enter into the U. S. treatment of Cuba. Why does everyone have to suffer because Fidel Castro chased some dictators to the U. S. long ago in 1959. In all these decades, are you telling me that the American democracy can't do better than hurt everybody in the region while hurting Cuba?" 

        The frustrated Foreign Minister of Colombia, Maria Angela Holguin, told Reuters that "We want to handle this humanely." She wonders why the U. S. government can't address the issue of the long-standing Cuban enticements. Meanwhile, the greatest wonderment of all is the acquiescence of American citizens who are either unmindful or unconcerned about how the U. S. Cuban policy roils, angers, and bewilders U.S.-friendly Foreign Ministers...like Maria Angela Holguin of Colombia and her counterparts in the region.

         On the above map you can see the city of Turbo in northern Colombia at the Panamanian border. That's where Cubans are currently stranded as they strive to reach the U. S. border by hiking, riding or flying to Mexico. As the Marco Ruiz/Miami Herald map indicates, many Cubans have flown to Quito, Ecuador, which still puts them only about half-way to the Mexican-U.S. border. Once there, Cubans are the only people in the world who are perfectly legal and home-free the moment they touch American soil.

Wet Foot/Dry Foot is not a joke to Latin American nations. 

 This map shows Cuba to be thousands of miles from Florida. 

Thanks to Wet Foot/Dry Foot

       Venezuelans are also flocking to Miami. The photo above is courtesy of Federico Parra/Agence France Presse and it was used to illustrate a major and ominous article in the New York Times Wednesday, August 10th. The photo shows hungry Venezuelans...middle class Venezuelans...waiting in line for food at a supermarket. The article is entitled: "Middle Class and Hungry in Venezuela." It said that "9 out of 10 Venezuelans can no longer afford to buy enough food, according to a study by Simon Bolivar University." Very sad news for oil-rich but otherwise very poor Venezuela...and for its closest ally -- Cuba. 

And by the way:

       Cuba's 26-year-old phenom Erislandy Savon has a tough test ahead in his quest to win boxing's Heavyweight gold medal in the Rio Olympics. In the semi-finals he faces highly regarded Vassiliy Levit of Kazakhstan at 5:45 P. M. EST on Saturday, August 13th, which happens to be Fidel Castro's 90th birthday. In the above photo, that's Erislandy Savon in the blue during his easy victory three days ago against England's very highly regarded Lawrence Okolie. 

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