[AmericanFailure1776]

If the USA fully lifts its embargo and travel restrictions against Cuba, there will be a HUGE blitz of Cubans trying to sail to Florida illegally. I say send them to Russia instead because at least that country (in a way, Cuba's motherland though that title really belongs to Spain) is a democracy today.

[froglipz]

Where do you get this idea from?

[AmericanFailure1776]

Originally Posted by froglipz

Where do you get this idea from?

Cuba may have recently "thawed" its hostilities to the USA but is still a country that plans to remain a dictatorship for a very long time. Spanish-speaking countries all over the map have an uncanny talent at scaring their own people away. Cuba is the perfect example.

[bmw335xi]

Ehh more ignorance. I have plenty of friends from overseas who have traveled to Cuba, it's no different than other places in that part of the world.

[jambo101]

Originally Posted by AmericanFailure1776

If the USA fully lifts its embargo and travel restrictions against Cuba, there will be a HUGE blitz of Cubans trying to sail to Florida illegally.

Why would they need to sail when they could just jump on a plane and fly the 90 miles to the USA? once here they'll just stay.

[kyle19125]

Originally Posted by AmericanFailure1776

If the USA fully lifts its embargo and travel restrictions against Cuba, there will be a HUGE blitz of Cubans trying to sail to Florida illegally. I say send them to Russia instead because at least that country (in a way, Cuba's motherland though that title really belongs to Spain) is a democracy today.

Originally Posted by AmericanFailure1776

Cuba may have recently "thawed" its hostilities to the USA but is still a country that plans to remain a dictatorship for a very long time. Spanish-speaking countries all over the map have an uncanny talent at scaring their own people away. Cuba is the perfect example.

Why would there be a huge blitz? Their economy will improve exponentially with increased tourism dollars and the remittance quota for Cuban ex-pats to send home to relatives quadrupled to $2000 per quarter. The Cuban community in the US sent home over 3 billion dollars while the embargo was in effect, and would imagine the potential economic impact of quadrupling the influx of US dollars to be significant in a country with a very low cost of living. Not to mention the availability of no-cost/very low cost health care versus the crap-tastic system we have here.

[beachmouse]

A normalizing of relations would likely bring an end to wet foot-dry foot, and any Cubans who wanted to remain in the USA would either have to file an asylum claim or face deportation if they overstayed their tourist visa.

[Restrain]

Cuban routinely fly to Mexico, cross at the Brownsville/Laredo crossings. More Cubans come in that way than any other way. Not near as dramatic as washing ashore in Key West, but Texas routinely has the largest entry of Cubans.

[Travelassie]

Originally Posted by bmw335xi

Ehh more ignorance. I have plenty of friends from overseas who have traveled to Cuba, it's no different than other places in that part of the world.

They ( Cuban friends and coworkers, neighbors who have relatives in Cuba, articles from the Miami Herald over the years) tell me that life in Cuba is very different for the people who live there than it is for the tourists who visit there, stay in the hotels and partake in the entertainment, etc etc. They have said that most of the folks there who are not well connected with the Castro government are very poor, there is a serious shortage of goods and services, often they do without these, and of course, there is no freedom of expression there. And for the dissidents and their families (those who openly speak out against the Castro government it seems that life is downright miserable there.

I can't attest to this first hand, of course, since I have never been to Cuba nor do I know anyone living there, but I have often heard it said that visitors to the island don't see the real Cuba.

[smarino]

Visitors the world over don't see the real deal when they are visiting. It's when you actually move somewhere that it becomes clear. Those are two, non related activities. It's hard to peg an entire country like that. Imagine you had a start up software company going gangbusters in San Francisco, vs having lost your pension after the city went bankrupt in Detroit (a city that sounds even worse than your description of Cuba). Or you moved back to the quiet of the woods after being miserable in a big city. Things are just not so simple that we can peg a whole country. Everyone's situation is different, and those situations are always evolving and changing.

It isn't that Cuba thawed it's hostilities, we did. That embargo is illegal (as is that horrible US prison on Cuba), and those things need to end as well.