10% of Cubans left Cuba between 2022 and 2023

You either use violence or you wait for them to collapse on their own.

We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.

That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.

Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel if I just took that from you?

It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it has.

They should've learned from the French making sure there's nobody left to hold a grudge.

I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that compensated us.

I can tell you, not just the US.

See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny percentage of population, votes or GDP.

And that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also filthy capitalists somehow?

As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing one for me.

Do something horrible to your neighbour - be surprised that he doesn't keep good behaviour torwards you.

Japan declared war on the US. Didn't surrender when it became obvious they were going to lose and instead decided to inflict as many casualties on the as they could on the way down. So they got nuked.

> Why the US is keeping Israel as their toy?

The US inherited a lot of messes after WWII. Not really the US fault the Palestinians always make bad choices.

> Why the US entered the Vietnam war (hint: no, not to avoid the spread of communism)

Hint you are 100% self servingly wrong about that.

> US is the bad boy of this planet, just because they can

I've come to the opinion people that say this are upset that the US stands in the way of some nastiness they want to inflict on someone.

I'll try those 2 you mentioned and see if it's to my taste. Dona Flor, made in Brazil, are pretty decent. Unfortunately they are not easy to come by near where I live.

It would suck badly there without the sanctions, too.

Though I think the sanctions give the regime an excuse. Obama was right to start to lift restrictions... a decade of continued stagnation even after the sanctions lifted would have undermined the regime's ability to continue to rule more than anything else.

or the consequence of having a clueless communist regime, since most communist countries do very poorly economically. Sanctions rarely give the whole picture.

https://www.wfpusa.org/countries/cuba/#:~:text=Cuba%20import....

Moving from Madrid to Amsterdam to get a higher salary is not what we're talking about here. I don't think someone from Madrid would start weeping at the sight of a Dutch grocery store.

When Spain talks about brain drain, they're worried about 1-2% of their population leaving over decades. Not 10-20X than in a year.

Virtually all Cubans, regardless of educational attainment or employment status, would kill for a shot at life in a democratic, free-market country, be it Spain or the Netherlands. Hence why they're leaving.

Q: "What would happen in Saudi Arabia if Communism triumphed there?"

A: "First, shortage of oil, later, shortage of sand."

Edit: for all the downvoters, shortages were our daily lived experience when I was a kid. I still remember chasing such rare stuff as "kid's sneakers" or "toilet paper".

And Czechoslovakia was still better off than neighbouring Poland, where you could walk into a shop and find literally nothing in the shelves.

The black market was the only thing that reliably worked.

Most international banks get very nervous about facilitating transactions involving Cuba and even tourists who visit Cuba can have their travel to the US restricted.

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/usa/entry-requireme...

https://youtu.be/WgWK6_AYq_o?si=5aqdt7DW-gYd7XdN

it might not be completely cut off, but the embargo is harsh, especially for an island ot only 10M people

From Wikipedia:

”The United States has threatened to stop financial aid to other countries if they trade non-food items with Cuba.”

"While the US measures against Cuba do not amount to a blockade in a technical or formal sense, their cumulative effect is to put an economic stranglehold on the island, which not only prevents the United States intercourse but also effectively blocks commerce with other states, their citizens and companies."

”Despite the existence of the embargo, Cuba can, and does, conduct international trade with many countries, including many US allies; however, US-based companies, and companies that do business with the US, which trade in Cuba do so at the risk of US sanctions.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...

It's a kind of blockade

Yes, any day. Because US embargos prevent you from trading in USD, which is pretty much the de facto currency for any trade due to its stability and backing.

Also, even if you manage to settle your trade in say EUR, you now have to trade without using any US intermediary. Nothing related to this trade can involve a US bank, payment system, legal firm, etc.

A US embargo is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a country. Only if your country has already strong ties to the middle east, Russia or China can you hope to do any sort of export.

Unless you were coming off a boat from Africa. Lets not forget that slavery defined a large section of American history.

A) are happy to put up with what is a luxurious salary for back home, but barely liveable locally

Or B) don't have a choice once they're in, since they practically become indentured servants

In the Netherlands, no dutchie wants to work construction for example, because immigrants from Eastern Europe often take under-the-table deals where they get paid drastically less than what a Dutchie would command, though still much higher than any job they'd get back home. The same happens everywhere.

The answer is NOT to bring the country down by mass-importing low skilled workers, but by forcing these hugely profitable companies to actually invest in the country and its citizens by paying all employees as it should.

It’s insane that the supposedly progressive faction of American politics is arguing in favor of a system that amounts to a modern version of indentured servitude and systemic violation of labor rights, all for the sake of cheaper fruit and meat.

That's exactly what we're doing (in Europe and East Asia even more so than the U.S.) by opposing skilled migration. Increasing legal skilled migration is much more critical, though other concerns such as asylum rights for those fleeing from an oppressive government or a war-ravaged country also matter quite a bit.

The welfare state did not exist in that time, so the cost of absorbing immigration was confined to acculturation. Immigrants had to quickly start generating value or perish. The incentives are radically different now and the marginal cost to society of absorbing each additional immigrant is much higher.

US government spending as a percentage of GDP remained low single digits until WW1; it is roughly 35% today.

> You gotta stop trying to fight the current

You must also remember that the natural state of everything is decay, and the natural state of mankind in particular is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". The current grinds everything down to sand. It is incumbent upon everyone to fight the current in the way that affords the greatest benefit to society.

That being said, you do want immigrants working right? That's kinda the entire point.

This isn’t true in general and depends on the local economy and the immigrants country of origin. MENA migrants are a net loss for Germany, for example.

Even if economists agree, the money these immigrants spend lands in the pockets of rich capitalists.

The entire topic is far more nuanced than you make it out to be.

Is this some propaganda website by Bush to promote neocon values?

This can only be true if they sustain themselves on their own work. An immigrant that does not work and only lives on subsidies can hardly be called a net positive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240111003833/https://www.econo...

Does that not fail your smell test?

EVERY immigrant?

>Making to the United States is quite a test of endurance, flexability and competance so people who pass that filter are quite likely to be intelligent

I doubt this is true in cases where you can literally just walk across the border.

I still have to come to terms with this way of thinking but in a world of limited resources it gave something to think about.

We are living in a death cult(ure), we arent reproducing maybe for economic conditions as in most developed countries wages have compressed in real terms and people prefer to have less if none kids than to lower their lifestile below what they were born into, maybe is the anti-family culture that permeates society, seiing the nuclear family as a burden to personal fullment, woman independence, career obstacle, problem for the enviroment or the miriad of other factors.

Importing migrants is just a band aid that moves the problems of our unhealthy society few years down the line, we need to focus on our dying societies.

Another way to look at it is that immigrant groups bring parts of their old world with them; German-Americans left a high-social-trust, low-crime culture and established it in their new country.

If these are the arguments FOR massive immigration then don't be surprised the vast majority of the public is against it.

Mixing races or cultures is like mixing many colours: at the beginning you get interesting patterns, then a boring uniform brown.

It stands to obvious reason that an invited houseguest is better-behaved than one that jumped the fence to be there, and doubly so if there is free cake being served. Any claims to the contrary need to examine the two groups separately.

I also never felt any issue regarding Jewish people but considering this was after ww2 .. nobody would really say a thing either, but personally they never displayed anything noteworthy society wise. another non issue

Now it's African, northern African populations being at the forefront of news, but personally i had many more issues with them (and i'm partially brown so the chances of them thinking I'm too different are lower). regularly they displayed very low morals, aggressiveness, sudden high fanaticism toward religious principles they didn't really grasp, worse behavior in school.

My mother knew people from Asia (Vietnamese, Cambodians) fleeing from war, with no resources, not speaking french, nothing in common with Europe, they mentioned seeing some racism, yet they too ended up being a non issue. They end up being as the cliche quiet-asian-1st-in-class kid and that's the end of it.

It's possible France or other European countries have some underlying, hard to describe, notion of integration. It's less economical and more about mentality ? Maybe except UK, where it's often said that anybody will to work would rapidly integrate. I still can't say.

Which Jews? Ultraorthodox don't integrate very well in Israel, for instance.

You mentioned Gypsies, well I read scholarly work stating that they were warmly welcomed 4 centuries ago in the towns of my region, until people discovered a tendency of their purses to disappear. Yes, the same exact complains that some French have nowadays. At some point facts are facts, and victimization doesn't work. For the record, a lot of other nationalities blended without issues within two generations (Portugese, Polonese, Vietnamese, etc.)

My understanding is that pre-WW2 Europe you had community groups that dealt with their people. So in a Jewish neighborhood, you had powerful Rabbis or other religious leaders that dole out law. These unofficial community leaders were given a lot of autonomy as to how to deal with their subjects. You see hints of that today in Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn where you have un-offical private police [0]. I don't think its as simple as saying they were excluded or ghettoized.

But that begs the question, what does it mean to be a country? Some people think its just magical land, like you step onto the country, get a piece of paper that says you're from that country and that's it. I think every country has a cultural identity. Much less so for America, since its the only country I know of where you can call yourself American despite not being born there or have any blood relatives from there but no one would bat an eye. But even there, some things are anti-American. Things like women being second class citizens (e.g. women can't drive or are forced to cover up). Or lawlessness (e.g. riding illegal scooters the wrong way down the street).

I think its perfectly reasonable to say that if you don't accept a countries values, you should not be allowed to move there. If you want to treat women like second class citizens or don't have respect for private policy or rule of law, you shouldn't be allowed to come to law abiding Western country.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/18/nyregion/brooklyns-privat...

I will speak from the perspective of one who emigrated to the US.

Every new group is initially seen as "the other". After some point, however, employers that hire "the other" may find that they can pay them less because there is less demand to hire them, and thus benefit financially, they hire more. As other employers follow suit, over time the salaries go up until they match that of other groups.

Their children benefit. The first generation of manual laborers and farmworkers begets the second generation of policemen, nurses, and soldiers begets the third generation of doctors and lawyers and professors.

In the US this has happened to Irish, Italians, Germans, Russians, Jews, East Asians, Indians, and Latinos. Why hasn't this happened to blacks (or has happened in substantially less numbers), despite the latter having the benefit of US citizenship and command of the English language from birth? Why hasn't this happened to the Somalians mentioned elsewhere? The Muslims of Dearborn?

Or look at Britain, where you have three groups from the Indian subcontinent:

* Indian Hindus

* Indian Sikhs

* Indian and Pakistani Muslims

Sikhs and Hindus have been very successful; they are more likely than the average to be part of the British middle class <http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/dec/14/middle-britain-...>. Muslims are, by contrast, worse than average in every single social measure despite being, racially speaking, indistinguishable from the other two groups to any outsider (since none knows, or cares, about the myriad of caste differences); they are all "Asians" in Britain. But the outcomes are completely different.

I will ask you the same question you posed. Are these differences in outcome the groups' fault? Or the host society's fault?

Can you explain in what way did this manifest in Sweden for instance? Or have any data/evidence besides some semi-vague claims about antisemitism and some immutable characteristics of European societies (which are hardly monolithic to begin with).

It's not that I even necessarily disagree with what you're saying but unfortunately your comment is 80% demagoguery and 20% substance.

> Why is it that economic migrants do, after a few generations, become successfully integrated in America, while they tend not to in Europe?

Possible different population samples that don't overlap as much? By and large (unless you're crossing the Mexican border I guess...) immigrating to the US has been significantly harder than to the EU even if you're educated/relatively high skilled. The US can afford to be much more picky.

> One might ask: Was that the Jews' fault? Or the host society's fault?

There are 2x more Jews in France than before WW2? Guess from where most of the threats/attacks towards them are coming? (hint: not the host society).

Not going to write novel about this complex topic but in US, if you fail career/financially wise, society lets you easily die homeless on streets, nobody really bats an eye and everybody is focused on 'american dream', chasing money and career. Not so much in Europe. This stressor for newcomers aligns people towards direction that is actually beneficial to native society, unless they fail and turn to highly punished crime. Here in Europe we are often benevolent with social help (sometimes too much I'd say), and abuse is not uncommon, especially with migrants since systems were often not designed with this in mind. Most people perform very differently if they have firm pressure on them from many/all directions vs not so much.

Also, absolutely nothing you write is relevant about ie Switzerland, which works a bit more like US in terms of those pressures and it shows on the ground.

The issue is easily 10 levels deeper and wider, no point drilling into all of that. But please refrain from reductionism and clearly very US-centric and confident view and judging of society you clearly don't understand that much.

Obviously the US being a land of immigrants with most commonly spoken language in the world helps a lot too. The fact Europe isn't like the US doesn't make it xenophobic. Compared to pretty much anything except the US, it's still among the most accepting towards people of different cultures.

We Europeans love to look down upon America when it comes to stuff like functional government, bicycle paths and public services, but wrt immigration we’re so far behind the US, it’s not even funny.

> a path toward integration (as in, "to become American"; there is neither an equivalent aspiration nor option "to become French")

We really need to copy this vibe wholesale from the US (and Canada). That people can move here but even their grandchildren won’t feel that they’re properly French (or in my case, Dutch) is obscene.

I like your observation that the root cause is the ethnic character of our states but that doesn’t mean we can’t take a note or two out of the American playbook. Truth is we’re not even trying.

Instead we’re hopelessly split between the left who stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that there’s a problem (and calls you a racist when you try), and the right who want to hold onto some ethnic nation state pipedream that we never were and never will be.

Or even ask, how much should they integrate? I'm in the UK. Jewish communities seem to have held on to a certain cohesion, and kept their traditions alive well past when the natives gave up on their own traditions and communities

No matter how many decades one lives in the Netherlands, one would never be seen as "Dutch". Whereas a Mexican living for 10 years in the USA and throwing BBQs in his backyard would be seen as 100% American.

In the UK we have large numbers of both Pakistani and Indian immigrants. One group has integrated mostly successfully in all walks of life and the other one has not.

Hard to argue that this has not been a consequence of choice although plenty of experts, who have never lived with 100 miles of these communities, tell us otherwise.

Other times may have different outcomes because countries and cultures change. Spain for example is a completely different country from what it was in the 80s, economically and culturally.

When you live in a place, and you see the same people showing up in stats, and people see the same behavior over and over and over and over, it's about time to quit calling people things and admit that something is going on and we should do things differently.

And if you don't then someone will show up promising to deal with it.

I know that million of white men died fighting against the Germans in WW2.

Why is it that 95% of what I hear from Jews is condemnation if white men for being NAZIs, when the majority of white men and the winning side fought against the Germans?

It seems like there should be a 60% gratitude to 40% condemnation split.

I my country Jews lived for 800 years until they left without saying Godbye in 1940s. But we have never held them hostage - they were free to move to Ottoman Empire or North Africa if that suited them better. Or behind Pale of Settlement.

Living in ghettoes, sitting shiva for members of community that married non-Jews or assimiliated, being under influence of fanatical rabbis didn't help with integration.

Some have a culture that indoctrinated them to exploit and explicitly not integrate with the general population. How would you integrate a culture that explicitly rejects integration without changing the culture itself?

Strongly agreed on most of these points.

The U.S. on the one hand, for all the accusations of racism leveled against it (sometimes rightly) is generally very accepting towards immigrants and integrates them with surprisingly little xenophobia after a while. The U.S. has been doing this for many generations across many different ethnic groups and almost universally, after a couple or more generations, they identify more as americans than as members of their culture of origin, by far. Historically there has been tension and racism throughout this process but it tends to fade and millions of people of many ethnicities join the American mainstream remarkably well.

Also, it helps that American society and culture are extremely charismatic in the eyes of much of the world in a way that powerfully encourages the desire to integrate among immigrants, and especially their kids.

Most European societies don't have either of the above traits nearly as much as the U.S.

However, I did a quick search for every sentence containing the word Australia, and found nothing that seemed to back up the claim.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-25/racial-profiling-conc...

Macron's hand-wringing and the 2021 Separatism law are two concrete examples.

> The idea that you move to a country and you're one of them is an American concept.

Not a very old one[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphenated_American

Now I decided to myself live in Japan and I hear the very same speech as yours again and again about my host country. Yet my experience is very positive, I have integrated well and made my life here, and I never felt like I wasn't accepted.

But of course it took a lot of work to get there. Learning a new language, getting familiar with the local culture and embracing it is far from easy. The problem I see with some foreigners here is that they simply don't do this work and keep living in their own (often unhappy) bubble. Or even refuse to embrace some local customs because they are convinced that their own culture's way of doing things is superior to that.

Of course you will have the French nationality, and of course we’ll consider you French! Don’t even need a French wife - I have many friends like this.

I might not consider you French if you scream “I hate France, vive l’Algérie” everyday, but a LOT of people will consider you French and, quote, “More French than the right-wing extremists”. Oh, the irony. You can say you hate France and all of the people in the center of Paris and Lyon will consider you are a good French.

So no, what you are saying is blatantly false.

I wonder why you would think that. France is one of the few countries were it does work like this.

Unlike the US, in France it's not common to even ask where someone "comes from" if they speak French, most people will just assume you're French. After all, one of the current candidate Prime Ministers is half Vietnamese, and a former Prime Minister (somewhat candidate today as well I guess) was Spanish. But they are both as French as anyone else without question, because being French is not an exclusive identity (traditionally at least, but the rise of the extreme right these days is trying to change that).

This is so untrue it's almost ridiculous

Legal immigrants, on the other hand, are absolutely less likely to engage in criminal behavior than the general population, because they are both selected for positive traits as well as knowing that a criminal record will jeopardize their chances of citizenship.

Here's some data from Denmark[0], for example, that breaks down various statistics for different immigrant groups in Denmark. I take it as axiomatic that immigrants from other Western countries are better integrated to Danish society than those from farther-away (culturally speaking) places[1]. You can see that as a group, immigrants from majority Muslim countries are very strongly overrepresented in violent crime.

> to put the blame of lack of integration purely on the immigrant group is very disingenuous

Modern immigration isn't slavery, where someone was forcibly brought to a new land against their will. Nobody has a right to be in any country they please, other than their home. So it follows that the onus is on immigrants to assimilate to the laws and cultures of the country they voluntarily chose to go to. Of course, it would be welcoming of the host country to facilitate that process, but I don't see that as being obligatory.

[0]: https://inquisitivebird.substack.com/p/the-effects-of-immigr...

[1]: Of course, you may disagree, but I would regard that as a strange position needing a stout defense.

What about UK, how did that work out for them? I can't see the charts.

Ask immigrants or the children of immigrants (like me).

Western Europe are just extremely insular and passive aggressive and will gladly bury their head in the sand regarding their own racism.

Anglo countries at least tried to tackle racism by introducing education about racism (eg. Civil Rights Movement in US, Aboriginal Rights Movement in Australia, First Nation's Movement and racial quotas in Canada, the anti-Skinhead movement and the trade union lead anti-racism movement in the UK) and trying to build an identity that trascends race or ethnicity.

Similar movements happened in mainland Europe as well, but aren't taught about, so mainland Europeans remain insular in their mindset.

To me this has a simple answer: (Western) countries with English as the primary language are all New World countries, with the obvious exception of the British Isles nations.

Don't you think it makes more sense to look at Trump's 2024 platform?

https://rncplatform.donaldjtrump.com/

The only statement on legal immigration: "Republicans will prioritize Merit-based immigration, ensuring those admitted to our Country contribute positively to our Society and Economy, and never become a drain on Public Resources."

If you remove a handful of neighborhoods with particularly bad problems, Americas violent crime rate is on par that of Europe. Given the number of guns in those safe areas, if would seem Americans are made of some good stuff.

I mean this sincerely, isn't the debate irrelevant? You either support those civil rights or oppose them. I don't want to put words in your mouth but I assume you oppose 1A and 2A. Why not just say it? We wouldn't have to waste time discussing ancillary nonsense.