As holidaying Canadians return to Cuba, Cubans themselves are fleeing in record numbers

Canadian tourists returned to Cuba in large numbers this winter after their numbers fell to almost nothing during the pandemic. Preliminary figures suggest that Canadians accounted for about 52 per cent of all foreign arrivals in Cuba in January.

Cubans themselves, meanwhile, are fleeing the island nation in record numbers in response to unprecedented levels of poverty and political repression.

More than 220,000 Cubans — amounting to 2 per cent of the island's entire population — were taken into custody after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year. Others settled in other countries in the Americas or traveled as far as Russia and Serbia (both countries that allow Cubans to enter visa-free).

Within the Cuban diaspora, there is a sense that the country is emptying out — that almost anyone who has the means to leave is either actively planning an escape or is at least thinking about it.

An industry has grown up around the exodus, with airlines cashing in on Cubans' desperation by charging exorbitant fares to destinations where Cubans are allowed to land.

And there are indications that the Cuban Communist Party and its ally in Nicaragua, the Ortega-Murillo regime, are allowing and even encouraging the exodus in order to kill two birds with one stone by generating income while removing dissidents.

"This would be the largest single figure of people leaving the island ever registered, either before or after the revolution," said Jorge Duany, an expert on Cuban migration at Florida International University.

"It's more than (the Mariel boatlift) in 1980, the prior record, or the more recent upsurge in Cuban migration during the rafter crisis in 1994."

Duany said the exodus is being driven by a combination of factors, including political repression, a failing economy and "health issues, especially during the pandemic in the last few years."

"And all of these factors combined to create a perfect storm," he said. "So people are just desperate to leave, whether it's for immediate reasons like not having enough food on their table, or for having participated in one of the peaceful demonstrations, not just on July 11 (2021), but also smaller ones in the last year and a half, as well as the very extreme response by the Cuban government of repressing these protests and putting people in jail."

With its own economy a shambles, Cuba depends heavily on remittances sent by Cubans living in the U.S. The Trump administration imposed limits on how much could be sent and how, leading Western Union to close its operations in Cuba.

Last May, the Biden administration relaxed those rules and this month, Western Union resumed normal remittance operations. But Duany said the combination of the pandemic — which brought tourism almost to a standstill — and the difficulties around remittances pushed many Cubans to the point of desperation.

Duany said the exodus cuts across all segments of Cuban society.

"I think everyone is leaving," he said. "We don't have a good profile of the last wave of ... 2022, the 225,000 people yet, but previous data that we do have from Homeland Security suggests that it's a cross-section mostly of Cubans from all walks of life. They tend to be younger, of course."