Posted on 10/10/2014 6:09:15 AM PDT by Olog-hai
The number of Cubans heading to the United States has soared since the island lifted travel restrictions last year, and instead of making the risky journey by raft across the Florida Straits, most are now passing through Mexico or flying straight to the U.S.
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol figures show that more than 22,000 Cubans arrived at the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada in the fiscal year that ended last month. That was nearly double the number in 2012, the year before restrictions were lifted.
The changes in Cuban law eliminate a costly exit visa and make it easier for Cubans to both leave and return to the island legally. Reform of property laws now allows Cubans to sell homes and vehicles, helping would-be emigrants pull together the cash needed to buy airline tickets. With greater access to cash and legal travel documents, the historic pattern of Cuban migration is shifting from daring dangerous voyages at sea to making the journey by air and then land. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
“Cuban migration surges over land....” Uh note to AP. If you fly it’s by air. If you float, it’s by sea. Currently there is no land bridge from cuber to the U.S. I’m sure uncle fidel would be all for building one though. Check back with you later when you get some pics of the land bridge.
Just what we need, even more third world riff raff to further tax law abiding citizens.
Cubans work for a living, and they are as conservative as it gets!
Liberals hate them because they don’t vote for the commie rats!
Good. Cubans vote conservative! They know the hell of Marxism.
Why would anyone want to leave that island paradise? They have free healthcare, don’cha know...
Not so, refugees from communist Cuba are not the same as those people who are pouring across our southern border in droves nowadays.
I don't have a problem with accepting Cubans who are escaping virtual slavery in Castro's hell on earth. I came to know many of them in south FL when I lived down there during the early years of Castro's "worker's paradise", and to a man they were as hard working, decent, and honest,(usually more so in fact) as any of the native-born Americans who l knew and worked with. They neither asked for nor wanted handouts from government. When they and their descendents became citizens with voting rights they were some of the most conservative Republican voters in the US.
Those Cubans who I knew back then were escapees from communist slavery in a falsely named "worker's paradise", and if I had been in their shoes I would have done the same thing. Unlike the hordes of refugees pouring across our southern border today, their goal was economic, religious, and personal freedom, not a free ride on the backs of taxpaying Americans.
>> Cubans work for a living, and they are as conservative as it gets!
The older generation - yes. But, standing in line waiting to vote in Miami in the first Obama election, there were lots of nasty discussions between the “viejos” and the generation born and raised in the USA.
As for the generation raised under communism, they come here demanding all our welfare state’s freebees.
The Cubans I knew in Florida hated communists with a passion.
They left one form of socialism and came right into another.
"I kill a Communist just for fun....but for a Green Card, I gonna carve him up real nice."
Bump! Many of them felt exactly like that!
> The changes in Cuban law eliminate a costly exit visa and make it easier for Cubans to both leave and return to the island legally. Reform of property laws now allows Cubans to sell homes and vehicles, helping would-be emigrants pull together the cash needed to buy airline tickets
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