Many use the fact that many Cubans immigrate to the US every year as evidence that the Cuban people are opposed to the socialist government, and are fleeing its tyranny. “If Cuba is so great,” as it goes “why are they all trying to come here?” This claim makes many logical errors and false assumptions, one being that it generalizes the few who do immigrate as representative of the whole Cuban population of 11 million.

One of Cuba’s Caribbean neighbors is the Dominican Republic. 41,000 Dominicans immigrated to the US in 2012 (not including the tens of thousands more that came undocumented). Under 10,000 total came from Cuba that year, a fraction of the Dominicans that immigrated. The Dominican Republic produces far more immigrants than Cuba, and yet has a smaller population by 2 million, and requires a longer and more dangerous journey to the US for immigrants. Indeed, millions of people from all over the world immigrate to the US, including 11.7 million Mexicans. Millions more have come from all other Latin American countries. What’s clear is that there is not a mass exodus of refugees from Cuba. Cuban emigres are given the spotlight by the US government and media because it can be conveniently used to as ammo to demonize a country that is not compliant with imperialism. The simple fact is that any time there is a developed country nearby a less developed country, there is a tendency for the latter to produce immigration towards the former. Cuba experiencing emigration is nothing abnormal or unexpected.

The claim that “Cubans are fleeing communism/socialism” is also tremendously hypocritical. When immigrants come from any other Latin American country, almost all which are capitalist, Western analysts avoid acknowledging that their economies are capitalist. Regardless of their actual reasons, any immigrant that comes from Cuba is automatically a victim of communism who is fleeing their government. Nearly all immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean migrate for economic reasons: they have little food, no way to make a living, may lose their home, or are employed on a poverty wage. Thus, they emigrate in hopes of alleviating economic problems. What’s more ironic is that these are problems that capitalist Latin American countries face at higher rates than Cuba. Homelessness, unemployment, and poverty in Cuba are among the lowest in the Americas and even the world. In fact, Cuba is the 2nd-most developed country in Latin America, per the 2014 Human Development Index. While capitalist countries produce immigrants out of their systemic inability or unwillingness to provide such basic human rights, Cuba produces immigrants merely because some Cubans wish to live in a more developed country, and reap whatever individual benefits may come with development. If it is true that Cubans leave because “socialism/communism made their lives hard,” one must also acknowledge that statistically speaking, socialism provided the best lives they could’ve had in Latin America.

Case Study: the Mariel Boatlift

Let’s say that what the anti-communists say is true: an enormous portion of the Cuban population wishes to flee to the US. Furthermore, let’s say that one day Cuba decided to not only open a port for anyone to leave safely to the US, but would accept any boat from the United States to land on its shores and ferry individuals to the US. What percentage of Cubans would decide to leave? Thirty percent? Fifty percent? Especially after several decades of restricted travel policies, even those that are pro-Cuba might assume that there must be at least a significant built-up population that would be disillusioned and want to leave. In 1980, Cuba did just this, and maintained the open “Mariel boatlift” for 6 months. Expectations were somewhat shattered. 125,000 people, or about 1.2% of the population, left. After just the first two months, the number of emigrants significantly slumped, and returned to a below-average rate compared to the rest of the Carribean.

Cuba does not have an emigration problem, and probably would not even if accommodating transportation was guaranteed (something immigrants from any other country would never receive).