Charles Lane writes in WashPost:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/21/migration-cuba-nicaragua-venezuela-dictatorship/
. . . .
Like the 1980 and 1994 boatlift crises, the present one may be in part tacitly encouraged by the Havana regime, which, like its allies in Managua and Caracas, is closely aligned with Russia.
It is in these governments’ interest to export dissent and stir political trouble for President Biden — as the boatlifts did for his Democratic predecessors Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
Notably, the exodus from Cuba accelerated after its ally Nicaragua ended its visa requirement for Cubans, making it far easier for the latter to reach the Central American isthmus — and continue on to the border.
Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela do not take their citizens back if deported from the United States, which renders the Biden administration all but powerless to deter the flow.
All of the above should inform the debate about “root causes” of migration, which, like so many of its predecessors, the Biden administration has promised to address. There is a related argument over the United States’ own culpability in the plight of people living under the three left-wing regimes. Washington has sanctioned each one for gross human rights violations, the most recent being Cuba’s nightmarish crackdown on protests that broke out in July 2021 and a similar round-up of dissidents by President Daniel Ortega’s regime in Nicaragua.
Even when the United States targets them to limit collateral damage, these measures can affect ordinary people and not just the regimes; obviously, too, millions have left non-communist countries in Latin America for a better life in the United States.
What is nevertheless undeniable is the historic debacle represented by the departure of over 6 million from Venezuela, whose population peaked at 30 million in 2015, when the main phase of the exodus began. That is a fifth of the entire country.
For Cuba, 200,000 emigrants in a year represents nearly 2 percent of its 11.3 million population. In Nicaragua, the 200,000 who have left since Ortega’s crackdown began four years ago, mostly for the United States and next-door Costa Rica, amount to 3 percent of a 6.6 million population.
U.S. sanctions, under which — for example — this country was still Cuba’s second-largest supplier of food imports in 2020, cannot possibly account for so many people “voting with their feet” against the systems they live under. The foreseeable failure of subjecting the economy to top-down control and denying people basic freedoms can.
The exodus is thus a tremendous compliment to the United States and other democratic capitalist countries. We should appreciate it. Meanwhile, it imposes duties: to treat migrants humanely and incorporate as many of them as we lawfully and realistically can; and to oppose more effectively the despotism that is the root cause of their desperation.
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Read the complete article at the link.
Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s in Wauwatosa, WI, then a GOP bastion, I remember that the party of Ike and Nixon never saw someone fleeing from Communism or lefty dictatorships that they didn’t swoon over. East Germans, Hungarians, the “Chang Gang” from China, Cubans, Russians, all were welcomed and viewed not only as great assets to America (which they were) but also as strong empirical evidence of the superiority of democracy over left-wing dictatorships!
In elementary and high school, I had good friends whose families had fled East Germany and Hungary. They were all hard-working folks who left much behind but “reinvented themselves” in a new environment.
Now, the forces of xenophobia, hate, fear, and the hope of exploiting the foregoing for political gain have replaced more realistic and welcoming attitudes in MAGA land. It’s up to the rest of us to show that these “negative values and bad attitudes” don’t represent the real America!
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
09-24-22
