Reply #201: If they want to "escape" they can go to the American Interests Section and apply for visas.

[Judi Lynn]

The US offers 20,000 visas yearly for Cubans who want to come here. Some Cubans who either get rejected, or know they would be rejected, come in boats. Many pay large chunks of change to smugglers in the go-fast boats.

The US offers more visas annually, 20,000, than to any other country. That number has never been sought, not ever, but it is available.

It may pain you to admit that some Cubans went to Mexico, to come across as do so many from the Americas who go that route, hundreds actually dying annually in the attempt to cross the US/Mexico border, and they were captured by Cuban "exile" thugs, held hostage until their Miami relatives coughed up large rewards.

You're attempting to conceal the fact that there are Cubans who come and go regularly.

From a book written by Ann Louise Bardach, former NY Times journalist, and author, a woman who has researched Cuba in the States and in Cuba, concerning the Cubans who come and go from Cuba, or did, until George W. Bush completely slammed the door shut on their travel back and forth to their island. (It has been re-opened by President Obama, but only for Cuban "exiles" and their progeny, not for US ordinary taxpayers.) The book was published in 2002:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. One either defects or is repudiated.

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a nod to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriots who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero, or comrade), are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.

Page XVIII
Preface
Cuba Confidential
Love and Vengeance
In Miami and Havana

Copyright© 2002 by
Ann Louise Bardach

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It would seem she holds a different view from yours, and I imagine she does know whereof she speaks, by now.