Cuban protests, and US-Cuba relations in general

[Danoff]

If Cuban refugees should be provided with a back door, how about Haitian asylum seekers? Sh9uld historical precedent count for anything in this instance? Sorry for the off-topic.

Well I think it does make sense to discourage people from taking to rafts to try to make it to the US. That creates an absolute humanitarian mess. So I understand the policy a little, I just think a temporary moratorium might be a good idea in the presence of major unrest. Haiti is a separate call, I don't know how bad things have gotten there. The US government seems to really really reeeaaaally not want people trying to make it by sea to the US. But I'm not sure the answer is to stick by that requirement at all times.

 

[UKMikey]

Well I think it does make sense to discourage people from taking to rafts to try to make it to the US. That creates an absolute humanitarian mess. So I understand the policy a little, I just think a temporary moratorium might be a good idea in the presence of major unrest. Haiti is a separate call, I don't know how bad things have gotten there. The US government seems to really really reeeaaaally not want people trying to make it by sea to the US. But I'm not sure the answer is to stick by that requirement at all times.

I don't know. Rather than relax an existing policy that non Cuban latinos see as unfair they could also treat the Cuban unrest as a separate case and admit asylum seekers while the humanitarian crisis continues. Same result, different optics if it lasts only as long as the crisis does (and is extended to people fleeing other nations in crisis, not just Cubanos).

 

[Danoff]

I don't know. Rather than relax an existing policy that non Cuban latinos see as unfair they could also treat the Cuban ubnrest as a separate case and admit asylum seekers while the humanitarian crisis continues. Same result, different optics if it lasts only as long as the crisis does (and is extended to people fleeing other nations in crisis, not just Cubanos).

That's basically what I'm advocating.

Right now, Cubans can seek asylum within the US. But if they're intercepted in international waters, their asylum request will not be heard. They can still seek asylum right now, they just have to get to the US via other means. I'm suggesting that maybe we make it easier for them to request asylum during their particular crisis by not denying it if we catch them in international waters, at least until the crisis abates.

I can see how this could quickly turn into its own humanitarian crisis with the US coast guard trying to keep a migration of people alive at sea. So I get why it's not happening, but that might still be preferable to our current stand.

 

[Keef]

I'm suggesting that maybe we make it easier for them to request asylum

It was easier. Unfortunately the wet foot dry foot was ended in negotiations before Trump shut down the whole process.

Edit: Wow this thread has progressed a lot further than I thought. Ahem.

The main reason WF/DF was ended under Obama was as part of normalization negotiations with Cuba. Cuba doesn't want its people to leave, it sees those people as traitors. Cuba viewed WF/DF as an invitation from the US to convince Cubans to leave, and obviously it was very effective - we have nearly 1/10 of Cuba's entire current population. The Obama administration didn't intend ending WF/DF to be a negative thing, it was intended as a package deal, part of various negotiations and changes that would've lasted years. Unfortunately, because it was a hot-button issue for Cuba it was one of the first on the chopping block, and the implications fit right into Trump's pocket. A very convenient series of events, that.

The political problem with "helping" Cubans currently is that Biden likely still hopes to resume negotiations with Cuba. But he can't "help" Cubans without pissing off both the Cuban government and Cuban-Americans which seems ridiculous. If he eases policies against Cuba, Cuban-Americans get pissed because they want Cuba to burn and boom that's 1m Florida votes lost. If he eases policies against Cubans, Cuba gets pissed because it wants them to burn. It's just a really stupid problem through and through. And all these parties are effectively like single-issue voters which is partly why this is so obtuse.

Current policies and future policies are so at-odds right now that the only thing the US can really do is leave it alone and see what happens. Actively doing anything will sabotage something for the future. That's why they're talking about things like "give them internet" because it both helps Cubans and doesn't piss off Cuban-Americans who recognize the human rights abuses. It also gives Cuban people more power to topple their own government. Basically we have to let them do their thing and hope it works because addressing the actual government is a bad option all around.

 

[GranTurNismo]

According to Pew Research data from 2020, despite only 32% of Hispanic Americans identifying as Republican, 58% of Cuban Americans identify as Republican. Cuban Americans also have a significantly higher voter turnout rate relative to other Hispanic nationalities:

Most Cuban American voters identify as Republican in 2020

Nationwide, 58% of Cuban registered voters say they affiliate with or lean toward the Republican Party, while 38% identify as or lean Democratic.

www.pewresearch.org

Though it's partly true that the Castro regime was made large swaths of Cuban Americans feel immediately afraid of anything remotely "left", hence a low percentage of them identifying as Democrats- despite the Democratic party platform being much closer to the Republican party platform then Marxist-Leninist- I don't think that's the whole story. I have two theories as to why Cubans vote red at much higher rates than other Hispanic groups. First, a good chunk of Cuban Americans who came to the United States at the height of the Castro Regime were quite well off, many business owners and professionals, fearing that the Castro regime would seize all of their capital. Of course, still there were many of the indigent who also immigrated here. In general, those who are wealthier tend to align more closely with the Republican party than Democratic, and many Cubans in south Florida make decently high incomes relative to other groups. Secondly, I think that Cuban Americans consider themselves much more integrated into white society (white Americans are the most likely to vote Republican), than other Hispanic groups. 86 percent of Cubans consider themselves White on the US census, especially since many Cubans are ethnically Catalan or Galician, and are fair skinned and with lighter hair. This is in stark contrast to other large Hispanic constituents, such as Mexicans, Guatemalans, or Dominicans. Other than many Cubans "looking white", them having the highest median income out of any Hispanic nationality is also helpful in terms of them being integrated.

 

[Keef]

According to Pew Research data from 2020, despite only 32% of Hispanic Americans identifying as Republican, 58% of Cuban Americans identify as Republican. Cuban Americans also have a significantly higher voter turnout rate relative to other Hispanic nationalities:

Most Cuban American voters identify as Republican in 2020

Nationwide, 58% of Cuban registered voters say they affiliate with or lean toward the Republican Party, while 38% identify as or lean Democratic.

www.pewresearch.org

Though it's partly true that the Castro regime was made large swaths of Cuban Americans feel immediately afraid of anything remotely "left", hence a low percentage of them identifying as Democrats- despite the Democratic party platform being much closer to the Republican party platform then Marxist-Leninist- I don't think that's the whole story. I have two theories as to why Cubans vote red at much higher rates than other Hispanic groups. First, a good chunk of Cuban Americans who came to the United States at the height of the Castro Regime were quite well off, many business owners and professionals, fearing that the Castro regime would seize all of their capital. Of course, still there were many of the indigent who also immigrated here. In general, those who are wealthier tend to align more closely with the Republican party than Democratic, and many Cubans in south Florida make decently high incomes relative to other groups. Secondly, I think that Cuban Americans consider themselves much more integrated into white society (white Americans are the most likely to vote Republican), than other Hispanic groups. 86 percent of Cubans consider themselves White on the US census, especially since many Cubans are ethnically Catalan or Galician, and are fair skinned and with lighter hair. This is in stark contrast to other large Hispanic constituents, such as Mexicans, Guatemalans, or Dominicans. Other than many Cubans "looking white", them having the highest median income out of any Hispanic nationality is also helpful in terms of them being integrated.

Cuban-Americans also tend to be rather discriminatory against other Hispanic groups. The fact that so many label themselves as white (this is news to me), they're racist against other hispanics, and they're Republican...well I mean that just lines up perfectly with the white Republican platform. I'd argue that they're identifying themselves as white because they want to align themselves with majority-white Republican politics in the US, i.e. anti-communist. Of the Cuban-Americans I personally know, half of them can barely speak English and the other half are libertarian at best, Trump voters at worst. However, having been there I can tell you that probably half the population is Caribbean black (whatever that's called) and, err, "light Hispanic", or a thorough mix thereof. The vast majority aren't even remotely white lol. Then again, the Midwest US is mostly of Germanic heritage so maybe I just don't know the facial characteristics of actual Spanish people. That's a rare breed 'round these parts.

Apparently the issue is complicated (because of politics) and there is no true consensus:

Ethnoracial groups[edit]​

2012 Cuban census data[283]
Race
White		64.1%
Mulatto		26.6%
Black		9.3%

Mixed heritage is common in Cuba, shown in this 1919 photograph of the Barrientos family, headed by a former Spanish soldier and an indigenous woman from Baracoa, Cuba.
Cuba's population is multiethnic, reflecting its complex colonial origins. Intermarriage between diverse groups is widespread, and consequently there is some discrepancy in reports of the country's racial composition: whereas the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami determined that 62% of Cubans are black using the one drop rule,[284] the 2002 Cuban census found that a similar proportion of the population, 65.05%, was white.

In fact, the Minority Rights Group International determined that "An objective assessment of the situation of Afro-Cubans remains problematic due to scant records and a paucity of systematic studies both pre- and post-revolution. Estimates of the percentage of people of African descent in the Cuban population vary enormously, ranging from 34% to 62%".[285]

A 2014 study found that, based on ancestry informative markers (AIM), autosomal genetic ancestry in Cuba is 72% European, 20% African, and 8% Indigenous.[286] Around 35% of maternal lineages derive from Cuban Indigenous People, compared to 39% from Africa and 26% from Europe, but male lineages were European (82%) and African (18%), indicating a historical bias towards mating between foreign men and native women rather than the inverse.[286]

I personally would not trust Cuban census data because it's normal procedure for Cuban people to simply tell the government what it wants to hear. The Miami study matches what I saw with my eyes but then again I did not spend most of my time in Havana. The time I did spend in Havana, about 6 freaking hours outside the airport terminal waiting for my buddy to arrive...none of those people were white as an American would classify it lol, and there were hundreds of people out there waiting on flights to arrive baggage to be sorted.

 

[Dotini]

It looks like Haitian elites hired mercenaries to kill their president. In fact, billionaire elites the globe over may be running foreign policy, including assassinations and other violent actions without sanction from any elected government.

 

[TexRex]

I don't post on the topic much at all.

 

[Keef]

I don't really understand that guy's take on "progressives" being unhappy with the idea of a strong government. That doesn't fit with what I know about progressives. To me it seems that most of them prefer centralized authority, and many in fact want to cede authority to the government by outlawing guns and other weapons, etc. Sure, there's a push to "defund" or more accurately to reform police to do their jobs differently and better, but that's not the elimination of authority, at least not to my understand. In general I'd say progressives want more central authority, not less.

It's not the progressives who want to promote an armed society, say things like "I don't call 911, I call 811", support constitutional carry, or ignore concealed carry bans inside a tavern. Those very vocal challengers to government authority are not progressives lol.

 

[the_boy]

Funny how many Americans think Castro was the bad guy and not Batista (US ally) who killed 20,000 Cubans