Hundreds gather in Cuba in frustration at Ecuador visa rule

[Zorro]

Source: AP

Hundreds of angry Cubans confronted police and Ecuadoran embassy officials in an unusual display of public discontent on Friday after the surprise announcement of a new visa requirement aimed at choking off this year's historic overland emigration of Cubans across more than 3,000 miles (5,000 kilometers) of South and Central America to the U.S. border with Mexico.

Chanting "Visa! Visa!" as dozens of uniformed and plainclothes security agents looked on, Cubans with tickets booked for Ecuador in coming days complained that they would lose years of savings because of the change announced by the Ecuadoran government Thursday evening, which left them less than two business days to get their hands on a visa.

Deputy Foreign Minister Xavier Lasso said Ecuador would require visas of Cubans starting Dec. 1 in order to curb migration that he said "puts at risk men, women and children."

Ecuador had been one of the few countries in the hemisphere that doesn't require visas for Cuban visitors, making it the chief starting point for tens of thousands of Cubans who have flown there this year and then made an overland trek across seven borders to reach the U.S., where they receive automatic legal residency. The flow has surged in 2015 due largely to fears that the detente between the U.S. and Cuba announced last Dec. 17 would lead to the end of special Cold War-era privileges for Cuban migrants.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-gather-cuba-frustration-ecuador-visa-rule-163843886.html

[msongs]

1. but cuba is a socialist workers paradise. why are these people trying to get out? nt

[carla]

2. Why do you bother?

I mean why do you bother us with this mindlessness?

[msongs]

3. thanks for sharing nt

[Imajika]

4. You mean there is not lines of people trying to defect to Cuba (the workers paradise)?

Gee, what is going on? Cuba has to guard or threaten it's athletes and foreign workers to prevent them from defecting.

And things are only going to get worse in Cuba as Chavismo in Venezuela is collapsing (predictably), so no discounted/free oil for Cuba.

The laughable thing is there are people here on DU who try to claim that Cuba is a democracy lol.

[Daniel537]

8. Cuba is not guarding or threatening anyone to stay.

On the contrary, all these people are free to leave to whenever they want, but since they can now maintain dual-residency in both Cuba and the US the situation has gotten out of control and countries like Nicaragua and Ecuador are tired of being used as entry points for human smuggling. I was in Cuba just last week and Cuban-Americans are not only visiting but investing and buying up property in the country. So much for "fleeing oppression". All these people will return to Cuba in a year and a day once they obtain a green card.

[Judi Lynn]

11. The habit of returning to Cuba is driving right-wing "exiles" wild. They are beside themselves.

It has been giving the lie to their stupid propaganda for years and years, now, every time a Cuban in the U.S. returns to Cuba for a vacation, to see friends and family, as it's living proof no one has to "flee," anyway. Plain as the pudgy little noses on their ugly little faces.

"Exile" Congresspeeps have been trying like crazy to find ways to punish those who visit Cuba, like making it illegal for them to continue receiving their gifts from the U.S. taxpayers, gifts like food stamps, housing, medical treatment, social security, etc.

[joshcryer]

5. Apparently according to a DUer Cuba isn't enforcing Cuba's...

...citizenship rule so you can leave Cuba, get a dual nationality in the US, and then go back there and live or do whatever you want or something.

Get all the free assistance, resettlement money, and then be able to go back.

Or so I hear I don't know if it's true or not.

[Mika]

6. Yep. They're not escaping. They're coming to the US.

Lots of perks for Cubans only - via the US 's Wet Foot / Dry Foot policy and the Cuban Adjustment Act.

PLUNDERING AMERICA: THE CUBAN CRIMINAL PIPELINE

{snips}

A yearlong Sun Sentinel investigation found money stolen in the United States streaming back to Cuba, and a revolving door that allows thieves to come here, make a quick buck and return.

Cuba has become a bedroom community for criminals who exploit America’s good will.

- -

Livan Moya Tagle, charged in a million-dollar Texas credit-card fraud ring, told the Sun Sentinel that he stole to feed his family, and that Cubans go to the U.S. for economic opportunity. “No one leaves {Cuba} because of politics,” he said.

-

American authorities naively think “Cubans who leave Cuba hate the Cuban government,” he wrote. “I went to the U.S. to steal, to damage the U.S. Government.”
PLUNDERING AMERICA: THE CUBAN CRIMINAL PIPELINE

{snips}

A yearlong Sun Sentinel investigation found money stolen in the United States streaming back to Cuba, and a revolving door that allows thieves to come here, make a quick buck and return.

Cuba has become a bedroom community for criminals who exploit America’s good will.

- -

Livan Moya Tagle, charged in a million-dollar Texas credit-card fraud ring, told the Sun Sentinel that he stole to feed his family, and that Cubans go to the U.S. for economic opportunity. “No one leaves {Cuba} because of politics,” he said.

-

American authorities naively think “Cubans who leave Cuba hate the Cuban government,” he wrote. “I went to the U.S. to steal, to damage the U.S. Government.”

http://interactive.sun-sentinel.com/plundering-america/

[joshcryer]

7. I wonder how quick it would stop if Cuba enforced the constitution.

[Daniel537]

9. The Cuban Adjustment Act has become such a laughing stock.

Every Cuban who leaves the island is back there as soon as the paperwork in the US clears. Refugees? What a croc. Even, and especially, the so-called dissidents are living it up traveling back and forth between Miami and Havana maintaining their privileged lifestyle. I saw a few of them on my own flight to Cuba a few weeks ago, lol.

[Judi Lynn]

12. From a book written for former N.Y. Times journalist, Ann Louise Bardach:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, 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 nod 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, expatriots 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.

Page XVIII
Preface
Cuba Confidential
Love and Vengeance
In Miami and Havana

Copyright© 2002 by
Ann Louise Bardach

[Judi Lynn]

10. As everyone knew last summer: Cubans rush to U.S. shores before easy entry ends

Cubans rush to U.S. shores before easy entry ends
Alan Gomez, USA TODAY 6:57 p.m. EDT July 17, 2015

. . .

The question now is whether the improving relationship between the U.S. and Cuba should lead to an end to the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act's "wet foot, dry foot" policy that allows Cubans who evade the Coast Guard and touch U.S. soil to get green cards after one year, sponsor their relatives back home to join them and eventually become U.S. citizens.

Compare that with the fate of would-be immigrants from every other country who successfully sneak into the country: They are rewarded with a life as an undocumented immigrant, with little access to government benefits and the constant fear of being discovered by police or immigration officials.

Determining whether the act should change is difficult for all sides in the debate.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a Republican presidential candidate who opposes normalized relations with Cuba, wants to alter the law because Cubans are no longer traditional political refugees fleeing the Communist government, but economic refugees. He argues that many Cubans now get to the U.S., wait one year to establish legal residency and then start visiting Cuba on a regular basis.

More:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/07/16/cuba-rafter-wet-foot-dry-foot-adjustment-act/29911763/

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Corporate media always will fail to inform the U.S. American people that their taxes are being used to offer Social Security, food stamps, instant access to Section 8 housing, medical treatment, financial assistance for education, etc., etc., etc.

Just imagine how this looks to people desperately seeking haven from actual violence in other countries who are forbidden to show up here without total documentation and visas.