Thanks for filling me in. I used to work with a guy who had won the lottery, and I've been curious about it ever since. The Migration Accords -- now I've got a word to Google with for even more info.
Cuba Is Different: Why the China argument" doesn't hold. *** China and later Cuba have both turned to capitalism as a last ditch effort to preserve communism. In China, it has worked. The communist dictatorship across the Pacific is stronger from 25 years of foreign engagement, but it has come at the price of a burgeoning middle class and new freedoms afforded to millions that never existed before Nixon's fateful visit. Without America's trade and investment, however, China's communist dictatorship likely would have already collapsed under its own dead weight.
Knowing that trade has facilitated the continued survival of communism in China, maybe we didn't choose the best path. But hindsight is irrelevant, because you cannot put the baby back in the womb. With China a major trading partner - and growing, a sudden fall of the regime is far from America's interests.
In Cuba, however, we have no existing economic interests, and Castro is an old man. There are a few heir apparents, but Castro's cult of personality is the glue holding the deteriorating machine together. So long as the embargo remains in place, Castro's successor, and with him communism, will fail.