Tag: Cuban-American Voters

Thoughts on the Cuban Demonstrations

The Daily Escape:

Apartment block, Havana Cuba – 2014 photo by Wrongo. Most buildings in Havana are made of concrete and their outer walls are deteriorating from the salt air and deferred maintenance.

Cuba was in the news last week after tens of thousands took to the streets all across the country. Reports say that they were chanting for freedom and food. Wrongo and Ms. Right visited Cuba in 2014 and while we didn’t come away as experts in the country or its people, Wrongo has some thoughts about what’s wrong there today. And it isn’t a thirst for democracy.

First, Cuba is suffering from hyperinflation. Prices have skyrocketed and inflation is likely between 500% and 900% this year. This is on top of the economy declining 11% in 2020, and apparently continuing to fall further in 2021. The economy’s shrinking is due to Covid hurting tourism and to the continuing Embargo by the US; but the inflation is the Cuban government’s doing.

Cuba ended their dual currency system at the beginning of 2021. Before that, they had a domestic peso called a CUP, and Cuban convertible peso called a CUC. A dual currency system allows one currency to be used for purchasing domestic goods and services, and the other for foreign goods. The purpose is to make sure that a country doesn’t spend more money on external goods than it is earning from its exports of goods and services.

In a single currency system, when there’s way more demand for foreign goods than export earnings, if you allow people to purchase whatever they want, your single currency will lose value, leading to inflation or hyper-inflation. After Cuba transitioned to a single currency, Cubans could buy more foreign goods, but it has also led to hyperinflation.

Cuba’s caught in a trap: they don’t have enough of anything, including food. Their primary ally, Venezuela, can no longer help (also suffering from hyper-inflation). But shortages are shortages. Moderate inflation prices some people out of the market for a product. As prices go up, the demand goes down. Hyper-inflation imposes the costs on a different group of people, those who can’t get foreign currency, usually the poor.

This is one reason Cubans are in the street.

Second, housing is also a major issue. Most people live in an apartment or house that has been passed down from their parents. All children share equally in the inherited building, so homes are sub-divided into private spaces by the next generation. That means living space is very cramped. Arch Daily reports that:

“The average age of a home in Cuba is just over 75 years old, and three of them collapse every day. Cuba’s housing crisis is perhaps one of the most unique examples of urban inequity in the world.”

As you can see from the photo below, thousands of Cubans live in derelict homes.

Source: ArchDaily

Cubans are questioning how new housing will be built, or where the funds come from to repair existing structures. They are also seeking less state control over the homeownership process.

This is another reason Cubans are on the street.

Finally, Cuba has great home-grown Covid vaccines, thought to be 92% effective against Covid in clinical trials. It is administered in three doses, with two weeks between each vaccination. According to Dr. Guillen Nieto, inventor of the drug, 2.2 million Cubans have already received their first vaccination, 1.7 million their second and 900,000 the third dose. There are 11 million Cubans.

But Cuba just agreed to send 12 million doses to Venezuela, precisely when Covid cases are growing at home. In April they reported 31,346 cases and 229 deaths, compared to 12,056 cases and 146 deaths in all of 2020.

Another reason why people are in the streets. So far, none seem to be about democracy.

Now, Republicans are again bleating about Cuba. It remains to be seen whether the protests are a unique event that will be quashed by Cuba’s regime, or if it’s the start of a meaningful movement.

The US embargo has been our single strategy with Cuba since 1959, and it hasn’t worked. Hoping the population feels hungry enough and desperate enough to revolt against its government is cruel and capricious. The Cuban embargo has been one of America’s biggest foreign policy failures. If you want to change Cuba, you should flood it with American money.

That was starting to happen under Obama.

Based on Wrongo’s 2014 visit, Cubans like American goods. They like American dollars. They’d like access to better food than what they get under the government’s food subsidy program. Under Obama, it was starting to happen.

Trump put a stop to all of that because of Florida’s anti-Castro clique. They still think that cutting off ties to the regime will make a difference, notwithstanding 60+ years of failure.

So far, Biden is just continuing Trump’s policy. Florida didn’t vote for Biden, and its Governor, state legislature and Senators are all Republicans. Biden should just end the embargo and be done with it.

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Special Privilege for Cuban Immigrants

Ever heard of the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) of 1966? It says that Cuban citizens don’t have to follow US immigration laws in the same way as other nationalities. If they pass a background check at the point of entry, Cubans are free to stay in the US, get jobs and pursue legal permanent residence after just one year.

The law has been maintained by nine US presidents and 25 Congresses, based on the argument that Cubans had to flee communism, making them political refugees in need of added protection. Although it has been reviewed by many presidents, including Mr. Obama in 2014, it remains in place.

But the special status for Cubans isn’t limited to a free pass into the country. In an example of anti-communism run amok, Florida politicians have gotten Congress to pass legislation that increased US government assistance to Cubans from handouts of powdered milk and cheese, to a multi-billion dollar entitlement.

Aid to Cuban immigrants — who are granted immediate access to welfare, food stamps and Medicaid — has ballooned from a $1 million federal allocation in 1960 to $680 million a year today.

How did Cubans become the only nationality with unfettered access to US government benefits? Florida’s Sun Sentinel has been writing investigative reports about Cuban privilege for some time. Today, we focus on their three-part series on extra benefits that accrue to Cubans. Part 1, Welfare to Cuba, covers the hidden news that Cuban immigrants are cashing in on US welfare and returning to Cuba, making a mockery of the premise that they are refugees fleeing persecution. Part 2, Cubans retire to Florida – with help from US taxpayers, covers the untold story of Cubans coming to Florida to retire. When they get here, they qualify immediately for food stamps and Medicaid. If they are over 65 with little or no income, they also can collect a monthly check of up to $733 in Supplemental Security Income (SSI) even though they never lived or worked here.

Part 3, Florida politicians protect special status for Cubans, shows how over the years, Florida politicians protected the special status given to Cuban immigrants, transforming US government assistance into a multi-billion dollar Cuban entitlement:

• Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-FL) successfully pushed an amendment guaranteeing Cuban immigrants’ eligibility for SSI, when Congress created the program in 1972.
• During the 1980 Mariel Boatlift, Florida’s congressional delegation got Congress to authorize $100 million in financial aid to the 125,000 Cuban migrants. And they also got Congress to create a special category for Cuban immigrants that made new arrivals eligible for government benefits for decades to come.
• Cubans were able to dodge the Clinton welfare reform in the 1990s. While other immigrants were barred from benefits for five years, Cubans could collect aid upon arrival. This was orchestrated by Miami’s Cuban-American members of Congress at the time, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, (R). Ros-Lehtinen is still in Congress. BTW, Diaz-Balart’s uncle is Fidel Castro.

One of Florida’s justifications was that it should not have to shoulder the total costs of educating, housing and providing health care to thousands of new immigrants each year. So, after enshrining in law a mass migration to Florida, they outsourced the costs of the Cuban benefit program to taxpayers throughout the US.

The scamology is demonstrated by the Sun Sentinel’s investigation that found that Cubans are disproportionately represented among foreign-born recipients of SSI. In 2013, one in 10 Cubans was collecting SSI, compared to one in 25 immigrants from all other nations.

The Sun Sentinel found that the US policy of treating Cubans as refugees who require special treatment endures even as the rationale for it fades with the restoration of US-Cuba diplomatic relations. Many Cubans now come to America for economic opportunity, but they’re granted public support as victims of oppression, while frequently returning to Cuba, often staying there for months, while We the People keep paying.

Some elderly Cuban migrants move in with their grown children or relatives already here, but still receive US aid even though their families have the means to support them. The Sun Sentinel found:

• A couple with a toddler in south Miami-Dade County, with a combined annual income of $125,000, brought over the husband’s 67-year-old father, who then collected food stamps and $8,400 a year in SSI.
• A Miami Lakes woman and her husband took in her aging parents, who qualified for $7,200 a year in SSI. The family’s household income: $144,200.

Indications are that these are not isolated cases. Miami-Dade leads the nation among large counties in the percentage of people over 65 receiving SSI. About two-thirds of Miami’s elderly SSI recipients are Cuba natives.

You have probably noticed that the majority of Republicans (including all of the presidential candidates) are completely silent on this, a subject they would howl about if it were a preference for different immigrant group. And Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz have been direct beneficiaries of this law.

While Florida Dems also support the CAA, it is the Republican Party who defends it, and who does a good job of keeping public awareness the Act below the radar. That will continue, since Republicans hope to see Cubans vote as a bloc to help win Florida in 2016 and secure a GOP presidential win.

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U-Turn in Cuba/US Relations

Yesterday, Mr. Obama announced that the US and Cuba will resume diplomatic relations after 55 years of dysfunction and belligerence. Predictably, a few Congressional leaders and Republican presidential hopefuls lashed out at the president and the decision. Jeb Bush said:

The benefactors of President Obama’s ill-advised move will be the Castro brothers.

This was followed by these predictable words from Sen. McCain (R-AZ) and his paramour, Sen. Huckleberry Butch Me Up (R-SC), who said that the policy shift reflected that: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

America and the values it stands for [are] in retreat and decline…It is about the appeasement of autocratic dictators, thugs and adversaries, diminishing America’s influence in the world.

The Obama party line is: “the current policy has failed for 55 years. The Castro brothers have outlasted 8 US presidents. Let’s try something different.”

And here we are. This is now possible because the first generation of Cuban émigrés no longer completely control the Cuban voting bloc in Florida, the most crucial swing state to both parties. Consider the following:

• According to the Pew Research Center, there are about 1.9 million Cuban-Americans in the US. 70% of Cuban-Americans live in Florida, making them the most geographically concentrated of the 12 largest Hispanic origin groups.
• We know that the younger Cuban-Americans shifted toward the left during the 2012 election. In 2012, Obama won a majority of the Cuban-American vote in Miami. He won Cubans nationally by two points.

Here is how the political sands have shifted:

Cuban Political Preference

Thus, politics no longer drives the decision about our relationship with Cuba. Our 55 year-old hard line position was more about those upper middle class Cuban-American émigrés who hoped that the embargo would eventually force the return of houses that they abandoned 55 years ago when they left Cuba for Miami.

A final reason why this works for both sides right now is the Saudi decision to force lower oil prices. Cuba cannot sustain its economy on its own. As an example, Cuba now imports an estimated 80% percent of the food its people consume, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion per year. Venezuela has been Cuba’s prime financial benefactor, but the Venezuelan economy is in terrible shape, even before the current sharp decline in the price of oil, which is its primary source of state revenue.

They will soon be forced to cut Cuba’s rations. That will be a huge opening for the US, particularly since Cuba’s former benefactor, Russia, has its own economic difficulties as well.

Despite the Republican bleating about Cuba as a communist dictatorship with a horrible human rights record, being a communist government with horrible human rights record hasn’t stopped America from dealing with China, which these same Republicans think is just fine.

So why not trade with Cuba? How can trade with Cuba be a sign of political weakness, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to global economic progress and a spirit of international harmony?

It’s been wrong for the US to continue to hold a cold war grudge against Cuba. The US could most readily help the people of Cuba by opening up trade between the two countries.

Let’s close with a song about going to Cuba by Jackson Browne:

Sample lyric:
I’m going to drink the Ron Anejo
and walk out on the Malecon
in one hand a Monte Cristo
and in the other an ice cream cone.

And they truly love their ice cream.

Good luck to the Cubans, a lovely people, and a lovely country.

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