I wish you were a baseball player.
Whenever I look at the sport sections of the papers, which is very rare, I find some familiar face or name. Baseball player A or B who made it from Cuba and who is doing pretty well, or not so well, in Team 1 or Team 2. They get a pretty hefty bag of money for their contributions to those teams, and that wealth gets distributed in many ways, one of them being providing a lot of people with the opportunity of making a living. As I have told several friends, I feel that the Big Leagues should be recruiting more aggressively inside the island, with undercover scouts so they can outfox kagasstro and bring more deserving talents to the baseball field.
I am really happy that the troupe dancers that obtained asylum recently are doing so well in Las Vegas. They are using their talents and abilities in the very competitive entertainment world and they are making inroads in the well established dance scene in Las Vegas.
Those Cubans are just a sample of the underutilized talent that lies undiscovered in the island, and I am not talking only sports and arts, there are many brilliant professionals and inventors who are sidetracked by the regime just because they don't lead a double life as government sympathisers by day and opponents by night. They oppose the flat iron policies of the regime and they are ostracized with no oportunity to leave and defect. Those are the ones that are being sent back under the dry-foot wet-foot policy, and this country is not taking advantage of the incredible amount of talented people who want to come here badly enough to risk their lives on the sea or crossing the Mexican border.
The problem is economics. As I repeat all the time, politics and economics are fused together, and political systems are defined by their economic views and practices.
Those Cubans who are accepted here as the baseball players and the dancers are no different from the balsero that is sent back. The first group has a built-in advantage, they have industries that are willing to take a risk in helping them out because they are guaranteed to produce money that reverts into society and the goverment wants them because they will pay a huge load of money in taxes. A balsero is a different species altogether. They come here with only the wet rags that covers their bodies and with knowledge, potential, and abilities that reside in them. The problem is that we don't see those untangible goods, unless they come in a converted truck that the Coast Guard will machine gun until it goes down to the bottom of the sea. Personally, I am partial to rescue those converted vehicles and send them back to the automakers as a testimony of American quality and Cuban ingeniosity coming together in making seaworthy amphibious machines out of vintage vehicles.
The balseros are poor in the moment of arrival and with no apparent potential, because a wet and scared human being looks the same than the next. Really bad.
There's no articulation in the speech of somebody that has spent a week at the mercy of the sea, there's no way of knowing who they are or what they can offer, and no time to find out, since they are sent on their way back if they don't touch land.
And that's totally unfair.
Besides, a player or a performer gets an immediate recognition, and becoming a celebrity is almost to become a deity, as we all know. Also, they tend to be very quiet about politics, so they don't step on any toes. If they stay quiet is because they want to help their families to survive in Cuba or to come here, and they fear the repercussions of kagasstro's revenge, something that is carried out through the leftist media. A balsero, on the other hand, has nothing to lose. He or she will voice whatever frustration he or she may harbor. They won't be able to spend a lot of money on anything, they will not be able to sustain with their wealth the work and services of same amount of people that a celebrity can, and they won't be paying such huge taxes. They are poor and poor is ugly.
So our duty is help them to have an easy transition while they go up in society, because ascending that ladder requires a lot of know-how. We also need to press for their acceptance in this country, and for the total elimination of that horrendous barrier that is the wet foot dry foot ordinance. After all, nothing is being done to eliminate the cause of all evils ninety miles south of Key West. Let them in.
I am really happy that the troupe dancers that obtained asylum recently are doing so well in Las Vegas. They are using their talents and abilities in the very competitive entertainment world and they are making inroads in the well established dance scene in Las Vegas.
Those Cubans are just a sample of the underutilized talent that lies undiscovered in the island, and I am not talking only sports and arts, there are many brilliant professionals and inventors who are sidetracked by the regime just because they don't lead a double life as government sympathisers by day and opponents by night. They oppose the flat iron policies of the regime and they are ostracized with no oportunity to leave and defect. Those are the ones that are being sent back under the dry-foot wet-foot policy, and this country is not taking advantage of the incredible amount of talented people who want to come here badly enough to risk their lives on the sea or crossing the Mexican border.
The problem is economics. As I repeat all the time, politics and economics are fused together, and political systems are defined by their economic views and practices.
Those Cubans who are accepted here as the baseball players and the dancers are no different from the balsero that is sent back. The first group has a built-in advantage, they have industries that are willing to take a risk in helping them out because they are guaranteed to produce money that reverts into society and the goverment wants them because they will pay a huge load of money in taxes. A balsero is a different species altogether. They come here with only the wet rags that covers their bodies and with knowledge, potential, and abilities that reside in them. The problem is that we don't see those untangible goods, unless they come in a converted truck that the Coast Guard will machine gun until it goes down to the bottom of the sea. Personally, I am partial to rescue those converted vehicles and send them back to the automakers as a testimony of American quality and Cuban ingeniosity coming together in making seaworthy amphibious machines out of vintage vehicles.
The balseros are poor in the moment of arrival and with no apparent potential, because a wet and scared human being looks the same than the next. Really bad.
There's no articulation in the speech of somebody that has spent a week at the mercy of the sea, there's no way of knowing who they are or what they can offer, and no time to find out, since they are sent on their way back if they don't touch land.
And that's totally unfair.
Besides, a player or a performer gets an immediate recognition, and becoming a celebrity is almost to become a deity, as we all know. Also, they tend to be very quiet about politics, so they don't step on any toes. If they stay quiet is because they want to help their families to survive in Cuba or to come here, and they fear the repercussions of kagasstro's revenge, something that is carried out through the leftist media. A balsero, on the other hand, has nothing to lose. He or she will voice whatever frustration he or she may harbor. They won't be able to spend a lot of money on anything, they will not be able to sustain with their wealth the work and services of same amount of people that a celebrity can, and they won't be paying such huge taxes. They are poor and poor is ugly.
So our duty is help them to have an easy transition while they go up in society, because ascending that ladder requires a lot of know-how. We also need to press for their acceptance in this country, and for the total elimination of that horrendous barrier that is the wet foot dry foot ordinance. After all, nothing is being done to eliminate the cause of all evils ninety miles south of Key West. Let them in.
2 Comments:
SO...overall, some Cubans are more "equal" than others and this depends on their ability to produce an income ( and of course as you say share 25% of that with their Uncle Sam)
Give me your tired , your poor ( as long as they can make some SERIOUS cash in the next three months)
Just on the basis of THIS inequity the dry foot/wet foot law is a travesty of justice and I DO hope at least one inmigration attorney will bring a Balsero case to the fucking supreme court and see how THAT plays in the eyes of the American people who DO NOT subscribe to privileges based on financial status.
Talk about having your cake and eating too! Send the BROWNS back BUT leave the BROWNS with green back potential in.
and it AMAZES me how those who represent a good finacial prospect are embraced by ALL Cubans in the USA.
As much as I am DELIGHTED that these men and women are finally free and able to share their god given gifts with a society and not as a KaSStrist propagandistoc tool I would say that is ONE balsero is sent back because he is considered to be an "ECONOMIC" migrant then ALL Cubans who are here for economic reasons SHOULD be deported.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
One thing that I don't buy at all is that one of classifying Cubans as brown people. Cubans are not brown. They are European and African, Moorish, Jewish, and Asian, with all the shades in between, as you will see in any metropolitan area of the U.S. Painting Cubans "brown" is to play into a self pity game that is not consistent with the Cuban character. I don't want anybody looking down on me as a "race" just because someone feels "brown" and the idea of minority start paying dividends. To be Cuban is not being part of a race, it's being part of a cultural and historical identity, and they come in all sorts of races and religions. The brown thing is just a simplification of our history and cultural heritage, another example of dumbing down our complexity with an objective that is not clear to me.
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