Reply #4: Hundreds of Latin Americans die annually trying to get across the border [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

from Mexico to California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. They die in various ways from drowning, exposure, dehydration, etc. The desert has been littered with their remains.

If they were offered a free chance to stay here once they crossed, there would be THOUSANDS dying in the effort annually.

Haitians, Dominicans, etc. also participate in Caribbean migration, and they DO get taken to jail and returned A.S.A.P. when they are detected in America. They also would come here in torrents if they were offered the array of perks available to Cubans.

Even with the attractive inducements, some Cubans have returned, or spent time coming and going:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolutionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. One either defects or is repudiated.

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a not to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriates who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero, or comrade), are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.
(snip/...)

Page xviii, preface
Cuba Confidential
Ann Louise Bardach
Former New York Times, Vanity Fair writer
Currently Newsweek International

On edit:

Thanks, Mika, for reference to the benefits which are offered to Cuban immigrants upon arrival in the U.S. Most Americans haven't been aware of this from the first. It takes a while, doesn't it, for word to get around?

This privilege which is withheld from other nationalities facing equal or greater dangers getting to the States is surely resented.