People continue to flee the commies in Cuba

 USA Today:

The majority of Marcos Perez’s friends fled the country last year. Now, he and his family are pooling their money to do the same.

“Only a few of my friends are left, the ones who lack ambition and the ones who have kids. I could count them on one hand,” Perez said. His father sells goods on the black market to keep the family fed and clothed, and has even earned enough to buy a new, sleek metal fridge, an uncommon luxury in Cuba.

Over the past year, 305,000 Cubans crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, most asking for asylum. That’s nearly 3% of the island’s population. Many migrants flew to Nicaragua or Panama, countries that do not require a specific visa for Cubans, and trekked through Central America and Mexico to arrive at the U.S. border. Others applied for visas to travel to the U.S. directly. The exodus was the product of the island’s economic collapse, which has driven many thousands into food insecurity.

Originally, Cubans were exempt from Title 42, the pandemic-era law that allowed border patrol to return migrants from six countries into Mexico without a formal deportation process, due to public health concerns. Then, in January, President Joe Biden signed an executive order effectively ending this exemption and blocking Cubans from entering the United States through the Mexican border and asking for asylum.

Since then, thousands of Cubans have been turned away and are now stuck in border towns in Mexico. Title 42 recently expired, but the alternative is not much better for Cuban migrants. A new order from the administration requires migrants to apply for asylum in Mexico before they arrive at the U.S. border, and most single adults will be turned away and deported back into Mexico if border patrol encounters them at the wall. Mexico has agreed to keep taking in migrants from other countries, as they did under Title 42, in exchange for the building of a gas pipeline and other infrastructural projects.

Thousands who were planning to leave Cuba through the U.S.-Mexico border route are frantically looking for sponsors within the U.S. who can help them get a visa through the new humanitarian parole program, which requires Cubans to apply for a visa, wait for months for an approval, and then fly directly from Havana. Those who cannot find a sponsor, a U.S. citizen or permanent resident who can legally vouch for the migrant, are left without options.

At the same time, Cuba is facing an economic disaster, along with bleak shortages of food and fuel. Hundreds of thousands of people who were planning to leave the island this year will not be able to, as only those with strong ties to the U.S., in the form of a family member to serve as a sponsor, will be allowed in.

Critics of Biden’s new immigration policy say it is inhumane, as it forbids Cubans, many of whom are facing severe poverty and food insecurity, from asking for asylum, and abandons migrants in Mexican border towns where they are vulnerable to kidnappings for ransom.
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Democrats are not as welcoming to Cuban migrants because having suffered under communism the Cubans generally support Republicans when they get to the US.