A broken immigration system: the extension of the Title 42 immigration policy leaves many Cuban asylum seekers in crisis

After five years of saving money, Patri, from Havana, Cuba, was ready to make the trek to the United States. Cuba’s economic crisis has become so dire in the past few years, due to COVID-19. The cost of living has been steadily rising and there has been an increase in food shortages. In 2022, 2% of Cuba’s population left for the U.S. and Patri hoped to be one of them. She saved up the equivalent of 8,000 dollars. However, this was rendered impossible by the Supreme Court’s decision that extended Title 42’s immigration policy. Now if you are seeking asylum, as Patri is, from four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti, you have to apply for a parole process. The process allows only 30,000 migrants to enter the U.S. per month and the qualifications are steep. You need to have a valid passport, pass a background check, afford the airfare, and have a sponsor with legal status who is already inside the U.S. that can help to support you financially. If you do not have a sponsor, as Patri doesn’t, you will be turned away at the border and forced to remain in Mexico for the time being. For many, this can be a death sentence, left vulnerable to theft, homelessness, and kidnapping for ransom. Despite these risks, many migrants make the trek anyway because they simply have no other alternative. The extension of the harmful Title 42 immigration policy by the Supreme Court and the Biden Administration leaves many Cuban asylum seekers in a crisis due to unreasonable restrictions. In response, the Biden Administration has put forth future policy changes to counteract the extension of Title 42 that will hopefully accomplish its goal of fixing the broken immigration system. 

What is Title 42? 

Title 42 is a U.S. law used in issues such as civil rights, public health, social welfare, and more. The government can use it to take emergency actions to keep contagious diseases out of the country. It was first used in 1929 during a meningitis outbreak to keep Chinese and Filipino ships from entering the U.S. and spreading the disease. The law was only enacted again in 2020 by then-president, Donald Trump, due to the global COVID-19 outbreak. However, Trump also used this law and its implications to turn away migrants from the border more quickly without having to consider their cases for asylum. Since this law has been put into effect in 2020, 2 million people have been barred from entering the U.S. 

The Trump Administration’s impact on immigration policy

Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency are defined largely by his harsh views and policies on immigration and enforcement.  There are 100 million displaced refugees in the world today, a number that only grew worse during Trump’s presidency. He reduced legal immigration into the United States by 49%. From 2016-2019, there was an increase in denials for military naturalizations by 54%. During his presidency, 5,460 children were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico Border. In 2017, he announced that he would dismantle DACA, Deferred Actions for Childhood Arrivals, which provides relief from deportation and work authorization for immigrants brought to America as children. He also tried to terminate TPS, Temporary Protected Status, a program that grants legal status – including work authorization and protection from deportation – to people from designated countries facing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or other extraordinary conditions preventing their safe return. Hate crimes against Latinos and Hispanics rose by 21% in 2018. By increasing his anti-immigrant rhetoric, he made the issue of immigration one of the top priorities in the 2020 election. 

The Biden Campaign’s immigration policy promises

Since immigration played a powerful role in the 2020 election, the Biden campaign put out extensive information on how he was going to help fix the immigration crisis if he was elected to office. He starts by evoking emotion in his plan by saying, “It is a moral failing and a national shame when a father and his baby daughter drown seeking our shores. When children are locked away in overcrowded detention centers and the government seeks to keep them there indefinitely.” He ultimately, flat-out states, “Trump has waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants. It’s wrong, and it stops when Joe Biden is elected president.” 

Biden states overall goals for immigration policy, such as modernizing the immigration system and welcoming immigrants into the community. However, since this election was about defeating Trump and reversing his policies, Biden created promises for his first 100 days in office. These include, “Immediately reverse the Trump Administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border” and “End Trump’s detrimental asylum policies.” He wants to end the separation of families at the border by ending the prosecution of parents for minor violations since these are mostly used as scare or intimidation tactics. He said that he wants to restore asylum laws so they can actively protect people fleeing persecution. The Trump Administration put restrictions on access to asylum for anyone traveling through Mexico or Guatemala and those fleeing from gang or domestic violence. 

The economic crisis in Cuba

Why are there record numbers of migrants leaving Cuba for the United States? The number of migrants (200,000 in 2022) reflects percentages that haven’t been seen since the 1990s, and it's because Cuba is facing its worst socio-economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are daily shortages of food and medicine. There are regular power outages and last year during a protest against the government, the internet was switched off. Shortages of resources have culminated since 1962 when the U.S. trade embargo was imposed. To survive, Cuba has become reliant on earnings from international tourism and Cuban nationals working abroad. Due to COVID-19, the island was mostly closed off to foreign tourists and reduced visitor numbers by 75% in 2020. When Trump was elected in 2016, he reinstated longstanding travel and business restrictions between Cuba and the U.S., further closing them off from U.S. resources. He also reinstated Cuba to the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which obstructed the country’s access to international finance. 

In the last few years, resistance to the government has risen, partly due to social media and the internet. There are increased demands for political and economic change and for government officials to be held accountable. In 2021, there were massive Cuban protests that were fuelled by COVID restrictions and food and medicine shortages. Due to limited resources provided by the government, many were forced to turn to the black market. Many preferred to work for and sell on the black market because they usually made more money than a salary at a typical job to cover basic needs. The Cuban's ability to be resourceful and stretch themselves thin is running out and unless there is significant economic change, many more are bound to follow the 2% of the population that have already left in 2022. 

Impact of the continuation of Title 42 on Cuba and asylum seekers

The continuation of Title 42 could create an asylum crisis for many Cubans. An official from the Washington Office on Latin America, a human-rights nonprofit, estimates that people like Patri, without a sponsor, have no chance of crossing the border anytime soon. While she and many others wait in Mexico for their case to be heard, they would be risking dangerous conditions such as homelessness and kidnapping for ransom. Oftentimes, appointments for Title 42 expectations get booked as soon as they become available and people have to wait weeks to have their cases heard. 

Since there are so many restrictions, many Cubans are turning to more creative ways to migrate to the U.S. In 1994 there was a Cuban rafter crisis or balseros crisis where 35,000 Cubans migrated to the U.S. on makeshift rafts. They spent all their money on the materials to make a raft and row across the Gulf of Mexico to Miami, Cuba. After five weeks of riots, Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba was welcome to do it without hindrance. However, President Clinton mandated that any rafters captured be detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. About 31,000 of those 33,000 were detained at the base while many others were lost at sea. Even though this process of immigration is risky and dangerous, many are worried that the balseros crisis will happen again. 

The extension of Title 42

On December 27th, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to keep Title 42 in place, allowing asylum-seekers to be turned away at the border, even though it would have expired at the end of 2022. It is now in place indefinitely after 19 Republican state attorneys general filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to keep it in place. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that Title 42 should expire at the end of this year because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s implementation of this policy was “arbitrary and capricious.” While many, such as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, argued that the public-health justification of Title 42’s implementation has lapsed, they still voted for it to stay in place. Some Democrats, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, think that if Title 42 is ended, the asylum system would break. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement that “Title 42 is a public health measure, not an immigration enforcement measure, and it should not be extended indefinitely.” Yet, the Biden Administration is complying with the Supreme Court’s Order and enforcing Title 42, offering no alternative to those trying to seek asylum on the border. 

However, there are steps in the right direction being made. In January of 2023, Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum applications on the U.S.-Mexico border for four countries, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Haiti. As mentioned in the first paragraph, the qualifications for asylum applications are steep, including needing a sponsor in the U.S. that can sponsor you financially. If one goes to the border without a sponsor, they will be turned away and the “Remain in Mexico” policy under Title 42 will be in effect. This Executive Order talks about expanding legal pathways for safe, orderly, humane, and legal migration. This includes increasing humanitarian assistance to Mexico and Central America, expanding the parole process, launching an online appointment portal to reduce overcrowding and wait times at the border, and tripling refugee resettlement from the Western Hemisphere. Biden has also reopened the U.S. embassy in Havana for visa applications allowing some an official route to emigration to the U.S.

Conclusion 

After the extension of Title 42 by the Supreme Court, the  NGO, The Washington Office on Latin America, WOLA, gave a list of 5 reasons why Title 42 must end immediately. Title 42 was not designed to protect public health, it creates a discriminatory system because it targets four specific countries, it puts people in need of protection in danger, and it undermines the U.S. ability to promote a protection-centered response to regional migration. However, the foremost reason is that Title 42 is illegal. It denies refugees protection from life-or-death situations. The Biden administration expels around 2,500 migrants every day.  Section 1158 of Title 8 of the U.S. Code does not allow for the blocking of fundamental protection and safety of migrants seeking asylum. Instead of perpetuating and prolonging a broken immigration system, it would be beneficial to invest time and resources in other areas. This would start with restoring the right of all refugees to seek asylum at the border. Using a COVID-era policy is not a justification anymore to keep implementing this law. Another is ensuring humanitarian support for the migrants that are arriving while also coordinating the response of federal, state, and local organizations to make sure everyone gets the same resources and treatment. Finally, there needs to be improvements to the adjudication capacity and resources, as the wait time could be anywhere from 2 months to 1 year.  There is a shortage of lawyers at the border who have impossible caseloads. By increasing the number of public defenders at the border, due process can still be ensured in a timely manner. The US immigration system has been broken for decades. Every day we wait to fix or come up with a new policy, thousands of people fall through the cracks and succumb to the danger they are running from. The system needs to be fixed, for the sake of rebuilding our asylum process and the democratic values that the U.S. was founded on. 

War By Another Name: The Failure of Economic Statecraft

As the Trump Administration prepares to depart office and give way to that of Democratic President-Elect Joe Biden, its foreign policy legacy is intimately tied to the policy of sanctioning foreign governments for perceived misbehavior. President Donald Trump’s displeasure with the Obama Administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a landmark nonproliferation treaty that all but eliminated Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons, led him and a cadre of Iran hawks from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to former National Security Advisor John Bolton to level various sanctions against Iran. The so-called “maximum pressure” campaign has crippled Iranians’ standard of living while doing preciously little to limit Iran’s nuclear capabilities or its various destabilizing efforts in the Middle East. In total, the Trump Administration has also either strengthened existing sanctions or levied new ones on thousands of people, countries, or entities. Furthermore, President Trump has revelled in his capacity to deploy sanctions against adversaries of his “America First” foreign policy, threatening to “totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!)” in October 2019 in response to Turkish aggression against Syrian Kurds.

Like never before, Washington has adopted sanctions as its foreign policy tool of choice. Given America’s financial dominance, place in the international system, and numerous allies, this is perhaps natural. But in the age of the novel coronavirus, it is well to ask whether the immense humanitarian costs of sanctions coupled with the existing crises of climate change and pandemics are justifiable or even tolerable in the pursuit of American foreign policy objectives.

The Purposes of Sanctions

Traditionally, economic sanctions are best understood as efforts by governments or multilateral bodies to shape the strategic decisions made by state or non-state actors in the international system. In their practical application, sanctions may take numerous forms ranging from travel bans and asset freezes to arms embargoes and foreign aid reductions. Targets of sanctions can range from terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda to states. States and multilateral institutions such as the United Nations (UN) may impose sanctions for a variety of reasons. In the statist context, a state may impose sanctions on another nation or actor that undermines their interests whereas both states and multilateral institutions may deploy sanctions in response to perceived or recognized violations of international law or norms. For example, the UN sanctioned North Korea after its first nuclear test in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the U.S.’s Global Magnitsky Act freezes the assets of Russian officials alleged to have committed grave human rights violations and bans them from entering the U.S.

Sanctions are valued by their supporters because, as Benjamin Coates of Wake Forest University writes, “Sanctions have served as both the idealist’s dream and the realist’s cudgel. They have promised to the powerless a world free of war and discrimination while giving the powerful tools for domination.” Coates also notes, however, “The legitimacy and appeal of sanctions rest on blurring the lines between these two outcomes; the more Washington turns to unilateral sanctions, the less legitimacy the practice may have,” which will be explored more later in this piece.

In more recent times, there has been a debate over the efficacy of so-called targeted sanctions compared to broader economic sanctions. The Global Magnitsky Act is an example of targeted sanctions, which apply only toward certain individuals so as to minimize the suffering of innocent civilians. Human rights advocates argue that targeted sanctions address what they view as the fundamental problem with the international sanctions regime- that they are poorly conceived to change state behavior and instead subject civilians to needless suffering even as oligarchs and dictators evade their impact.

Do Sanctions Work? If So, Are They Worth It?

The practice of economic statecraft more or less emerged not when the U.S. became the undisputed leader of the global economy or during the Cold War, but rather is likely as old as economics and statecraft in their own right. The early 20th century, however, is as close as one can get to the genesis of international sanctions, defined neatly by Coates as “a collective denial of economic access designed to enforce global order.” An increasingly interdependent world during and after World War I served to illustrate the intersection between military and economic warfare. After all, the British Empire was constructed around British financial and commercial dominance reinforced by the world’s preeminent navy. During World War I, Britain put this to work in a crippling blockade of Germany that led to malnourishment that would ultimately take the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. 

The establishment of the ill-fated League of Nations after the war included in its covenant a provision mandating that any nation that started a war of aggression be punished with an embargo. Facing complete isolation from the global economy, the theory as supported by President Woodrow Wilson went, nations would be deterred from invading their neighbors. This provision enshrined into international norm sanctions as the preeminent multilateral tool of enforcement for world peace.

League of Nations sanctions ultimately failed to deter Italy from invading Ethiopia, a League member-state, and from subsequently falling into the orbit of the Nazis. Though the U.S. government would enact the Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA) during WWI barring trade with Germany, TWEA would ultimately prove unsuccessful in deterring the Nazis from territorial conquest. In 1941, after Japan invaded Indonesia, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked TWEA to seize all Japanese assets held in the U.S. Britain followed suit and the sanctions cost Japan access to 75 percent of its total foreign trade and 88 percent of its imported oil. Japanese hardliners then used the sanctions as justification for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Instead of coercing Japan to renounce its territorial conquests as Roosevelt had hoped, the sanctions emboldened Japanese hardliners aghast at an aggressive use of American economic power to the point of deploying military force.

Following Harry Truman’s invocation of national emergency powers during the Korean War to activate TWEA, the emergency remained in power for decades to follow, leading to the imposition by future presidents of sanctions on Cuba, Cambodia, and others. Then in the 1990s, the use of sanctions really began to take off, The UN Security Council, now bereft of the Soviet veto power, imposed sanctions some 12 times during the decade compared to only twice (against Rhodesia and South Africa) in the previous four decades. Human rights abusers in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and state sponsors of terror like Sudan and Libya were some of the notable targets, and the efficacy of the sanctions remains suspect.

Iraq

But the most noteworthy target of the 1990s sanctions boom was Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Just four days after Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990, the UN passed Security Council Resolution 661, imposing the strictest sanctions up to that point in history on Iraq. Interestingly enough, even as the U.S. led the Gulf War coalition and the effort to sanction Iraq, it had supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War just a decade earlier and just two years earlier had refused to sanction Hussein for his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds.

The Gulf War sanctions, which imposed a nearly complete arms, trade, and aid embargo, absolutely crippled every sector of the Iraqi economy while exacting an unfathomable humanitarian toll. When partnered with the U.S. aerial bombardment of the country’s energy and sanitation facilities, the sanctions brought about a public health crisis. The arms embargo was so broad so as to include anything that could conceivably be weaponized, including computers and tractors, goods with a clear civilian need in a nation whose electrical grid was destroyed and whose access to food was inhibited. Limitations on Iraqi exports (namely oil before the OIl for Food Programme was introduced) made it more difficult to fund humanitarian aid, while the ban on the importation of chlorine effectively made water purification impossible. 

In total, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)  the average Iraqi’s caloric intake dropped to a low of just 1,093 per day by 1995, with “the vast majority of the country’s population...on a semi-starvation diet for years.” Food rationing enacted in the mid-1990s by the Iraqi government in response to the sanctions left Iraqis deficient in nutrients critical to fetal development, leading to sharp increases in stillbirths and congenital heart disease during the decade. Mortality rates for children under five years old increased fivefold between just 1991 and 1995. The public health system lost 90 percent of its funding, overturning half a century of progress.

By any measure, the Iraq sanctions, to say nothing of more than thirty more or less consecutive years of war, completely destroyed the standard of living and physical health of multiple generations of Iraqis, all as Saddam Hussein remained in power into the 2000s and long after Iraq had ceased its WMD programs. The only change spurred by this act of economic coercion was that the Iraqi people who had suffered for decades under a dictator now found themselves suffering under the twin terrors of both that dictator and the full weight of  international economic punishment.

Cuba

The Iraq sanctions program was a multilateral, decade-long endeavor. On the other hand, America’s ongoing sanctions war with Cuba is the exact opposite: a six decade, all-encompassing campaign of economic warfare imposed unilaterally. Initiated by President John F. Kennedy in 1962, the program of economic and political isolation of Cuba is now the longest-enduring trade embargo in world history. The Cuban sanctions program is the byproduct of five major statutes and a hodgepodge of executive actions. The 1962 Foreign Assistance Act was cited by President Kennedy when he enacted a complete trade embargo between the U.S. and Cuba and amendments that same year to TWEA allowed for Kennedy to expand the embargo to cut off travel to Cuba. George H.W. Bush and a bipartisan majority in Congress expanded the embargo in 1992 with the Cuban Democracy Act (CDA), preventing foreign subsidiaries of the American government from trading with Cuba and preventing vessels from loading and unloading freight in America if they had conducted trade with Cuba within the preceding 180 days.

The Clinton and Bush administrations further sanctioned Cuba via the Helms-Burton Act and the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which codified the embargo into law, prevented the embargo from being lifted without congressional approval and confirmation that Cuba had sufficiently democratized, and effectively prohibited private financing for exports to Cuba and restricted tourist travel to Cuba. Despite the Obama Administration’s “Cuba thaw” that re-established diplomatic relations, relaxed trade and travel sanctions, and removed Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism (SST) list, the Trump Administration ratcheted the trade and travel sanctions right back up and they threatened to add Cuba back to the SST list. 

Six decades after Cuba traded an American-friendly corrupt dictator with no regard for human rights (Fulgencio Batista) for a brutal dictator allied closer to Moscow in Fidel Castro, the sanctions have made Cuba no more democratic and the people of Cuba have been made much poorer. The UN estimates that sanctions have cost the Cuban economy $130 billion in total and U.S. sanctions force Cuba to source medicines and medical devices outside the U.S., inducing additional transportation costs on Cuba’s most precious export. Even the American economy is hurt by the embargo and other Cuba sanctions. A 2017 economic analysis performed by Engage Cuba, a pro-engagement group, concluded that the Trump sanctions and diplomatic rollbacks could adversely affect more than 12,000 American jobs in manufacturing, tourism, and shipping, and that the embargo costs U.S. businesses and farmers almost $6 billion a year in lost export revenue.

Moreover, the head of the office that handled SST issues during the Obama Administration justified Cuba’s removal from the SST list in the fact that, “it was legally determined that Cuba was not actively engaged in violence that could be defined as terrorism under any credible definition of the word.” And when President Obama sought to have Cuba removed from the list, he invited Congress to review the decision during a 45-day period, and they could have stopped the removal with a joint resolution, but even the completely Republican-controlled House and Senate of the time refused to take action.

Within the context of the coronavirus, Cuba’s pandemic response has been hindered by the embargo, which has obstructed the delivery of ventilators, facemasks, diagnostic kits, and other vital medical supplies. As President Obama declared “It is clear that decades of U.S. isolation of Cuba have failed to accomplish our enduring objective of promoting the emergence of a democratic, prosperous, and stable Cuba. At times, longstanding U.S. policy towards Cuba has isolated the United States from regional and international partners, constrained our ability to influence outcomes throughout the Western Hemisphere, and impaired the use of the full range of tools available to the United States to promote positive change in Cuba.  Though this policy has been rooted in the best of intentions, it has had little effect…[W]e should not allow U.S. sanctions to add to the burden of Cuban citizens we seek to help.”

Venezuela and Iran: The Failure of Maximum Pressure

“Maximum pressure” has been the Trump Administration’s policy of choice for both Iran and Venezuela. In the case of Iran, the approach of an inundation of sanctions was meant to be a sharp contrast from the Obama Administration’s detente centered around the landmark Iran nuclear deal. Iran had been in full compliance with the nuclear deal and remained in compliance for more than a year and a half of American sanctions after the U.S. withdrawal, and those sanctions have proved to accomplish precisely none of their goals, be they regime change, bringing Iran back to the negotiating table for a “better deal,” or Iran abandoning its nuclear program. Instead, Iran has increased its stockpile of enriched uranium eightfold and exported a significant amount of its petroleum despite the sanctions, all as Iran’s hardliners have seen their credibility at home increase thanks to the sanctions campaign. 

Rather than succumbing to American pressure, Iranian hardliners found it a useful talking point to rally against, finding themselves in common cause with human rights activists who noted that the sanctions denied many Iranians access to life-saving medical treatment. All of the failures of the maximum pressure campaign can be summed up in the words of a statement made by Iranian womens’ rights activists, “While sanctions proponents claim to care for the Iranian people, their policies have left an entire nation weary, depressed and hopeless. Sanctions, and economic pressure, target the fabric of society.” 

In Venezuela, maximum pressure took the form of a more explicit regime change effort against the dictator Nicolas Maduro. But while before 2019 U.S. sanctions against Venezuela targeted Maduro, Trump’s newest sanctions focused on the state-owned oil and natural gas company PdVSA, which provides the country with thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue, as well as other major sectors of the economy. The economy-wide suffering brought on by these sanctions (in distracting from his corruption and domestic crackdowns) gave Maduro greater credibility when he claimed that the U.S. was a foreign power seeking to destroy Venezuela and its people. All the while, Maduro has tightened his grip over the country, his opposition has been weakened, and Venezuela has drawn closer to American adversaries like Iran, Russia, and North Korea.

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations

These cases are indicative of a broader problem in U.S. foreign policy. Too often, sanctions have become Washington’s default foreign policy weapon of choice, as it slaps sanction after sanction on governments with which it disagrees without the slightest concern whether American objectives would actually be achieved by them and whether humanitarian suffering would be exacerbated. While targeted sanctions and arms embargoes occasionally serve American interests well in combating global human rights violations and war crimes, more generalized economic sanctions “are too often designed to inflict maximum pain on civilians, not empower them,” in the words of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). This reliance on sanctions has undermined Washington’s ability to pursue diplomatic solutions to global problems, undermined international solidarity with its foreign policy objectives, and far too often ends up hurting the very people Washington claims to be supporting.

The overwhelming majority of academic studies have concluded that sanctions rarely achieve their stated goal, with one paper estimating odds of only even partial success as low as 34 percent. Moreover, the longer sanctions last, the less effective they tend to be, as fatigue sets in for the imposing party while the target becomes more adept at evading sanctions.The pain of sanctions is widely dispersed and deeply felt by the people in sanctioned countries even as they bear no responsibility for the actions of their governments. Similarly, even in cases where sanctions are meant to combat tangible and concrete human rights abuses, such as in the cases of Cuba, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and North Korea, research suggests that even more human rights abuses occur when widespread (non-targeted) economic sanctions are in place than without them. As strongmen face foreign economic pressure campaigns that threaten to topple them, they try to cling to power by any means necessary, including by doubling down on repression of critics.

While there remains a future for targeted sanctions and arms embargoes to more effectively promote human rights and de-escalate conflicts, the constant reliance on harsh, generalized economic sanctions ought to be reconsidered and questioned. Any strategy to promote human rights and democracy that far too often augments the positions of strongmen and incites famine is inherently counterproductive and unnecessarily cruel. If this lesson cannot be understood now, in the midst of a global pandemic as the humanitarian impacts of sanctions prevent citizens of foreign governments from accessing food and vital medical care, then Washington’s obsession with sanctions will never be broken. For those advocating for a foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy and puts human security at the center of global initiatives, there can be no path forward that prioritizes warfare- military or economic.

¡Cuba! ¿Libre?

Changing American policy has recently allowed more Americans to visit Cuba – an opportunity that many are taking advantage of, and while American tourism trends are changing at a fast rate, social policy changes in regards to gay marriage in Cuba are relatively slower. American tourists want to visit a country they see as stuck in time; however, what they do not see is the extraordinary changes afoot in Cuba. Cuba has changed radically in the last 20 years, a fact that is evident in its social policy. While Cubans still face egregious restrictions on personal freedoms, some subsets of the population are gaining more liberty. Notably, gay people in Cuba are closer than ever to gaining the right to same sex marriage. Last year Cuba began the process of constitutional reform, which included language specifically defining marriage as being between two people with “absolutely equal rights and obligations.” This change would have allowed same-sex couples to marry. However, dominantly evangelical protesters in Havana lobbied for the language to be excluded from the reforms. The Cuban people have not historically spoken against their government (which still regularly jails dissidents), making the protest especially surprising. Indeed, the movement was even more unexpected in light of changing social sentiments in Cuba, making for a more inclusive society than in the past. While sexual discrimination is still a reality in Cuba, more people are accepting of varied sexual relations and identities today than ever before. Regardless, the protests were successful in blocking the language in the reform, showing that Cuba still has farther to go. For now, the national assembly is debating policy change separately from the constitutional reform. While this derailing of the policy may sound discouraging, the mere possibility of same sex marriage in Cuba was once an outrageous ideal and debate on the topic stands to prove how far the country has come on some social issues. Moreover, the relative change apparent in the last twenty years indicate that Cuba will continue to reform. However, this change must start from the outside. While citizens are not as free to demand change, Cuba is eager to please its business partners. International bodies and countries that conduct business with Cuba should increase their insistence for social change. Since the Cuban government is already willing to consider the matter, international insistence could superseded the demonstrations in Havana.  

LGBTQ issues have long been a divisive topic in Cuba. After toppling the Batista regime in 1959, the revolutionaries started constructing a country based on their movements ideals; ideals which include a distinct image of what a good revolutionary was. Many Cubans did not fit the mold, including LGBTQ individuals. The Castro regime defined homosexuality as dissident behavior and treated such individuals as such. In a 1965 interview Castro told a reporter:

We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant. […] A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.

Che Guevara is also cited as rejecting homosexuality and believed that it was a bourgeois decadence, incompatible with the revolution. To understand this sentiment, it is important to acknowledge Machismo. Machismo is a strong sentiment of male pride that permeates Spanish speaking societies. Its cultural importance substantial enough to define ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups, and ‘out’ groups are shunned by society. Interestingly the history of machismo does not infer homophobic sentiments necessarily. The stereotype of the Latin Gay is still considered within the bounds of Machismo, as long as he remains dominant. It is not a requirement to be straight, it is a requirement of domination: that the man maintains the power structure he was born into. As stated by Annick Prieur from the University of Chicago, “contempt for the effeminate homosexual is exactly what makes bisexuality acceptance [sic] for masculine men, and this is why homophobia, machismo and widespread male bisexuality make a perfect fit.” Therefore, bisexual or gay man are not necessarily condomed per their sexuality, only by their behavior. It is not the violation of sexuality that offends others, it is the degradation of being submissive. However, this contradiction explicitly persecutes transgender women who face even greater discrimination for fully breaking with machismo to switch or want to switch gender to the less desirable and less powerful gender: a sentiment that completely goes against Machismo. In regard to gay or bisexual men, the different sentiments tied to sexual ‘roles’ goes back to the Aztecs. When two men were caught having sex during the time of the Aztecs the ‘active’ partner was tied to a stake and left to die while the ‘passive’ man was tortured to death. Neither is accepting of course, but in one case the individual completely violated cultural norms while the other maintained their prescribed identity while engaging in an illegal activity. A shadow of resemblance to this system is reflected in Cuba.

To suppress the perceived gay ‘thereat’ to the Castro regime Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) were created in 1965. These ‘units’ were forced labor camps to reeducate a variety of persons deemed ‘anti-revolutionary,’ including gay people.  An estimated 800 LGBTQ individuals were imprisoned in the camps. There is not an abundance of information on UMAPs, however one former inmate, Emilio Izquierdo, stated that gay people were “separated … from the rest and put together work teams with just gay people, those who were active and passive.” While this fact alone cannot confirm a standing cultural norm, it does indicate similar sentiments. In 1968, the camps closed, but discrimination against LGBTQ individuals did not end, causing many to hide behind public personas. Homosexuality was finally decriminalized in 1979, but the change in legality did little to affect people’s lives as all ‘publicly manifested’ homosexuality remained illegal. While this legal change did offer some reprieve, violent crackdowns were common. In August 1997, Cuban police infiltrated a gay nightclub, arresting 800 people and beating many of the gay Cubans in attendance. During the whole month of August an estimated 500 LGBTQ individuals were arrested. Indeed, many more incidents have gone unpublicized. Since 1980, small policy changes have eased hardships formerly endured by the LGBTQ population. As the Castro government sought international aid and acceptance, it altered a number of its social policies.

Changing Cuban sentiment is indicated by two specific policies passed since 2008. In 2008 the state announced that gender-reassignment surgeries and hormone replacement therapy would become available to qualified Cubans. Cuban healthcare is state provided and therefore under state control. There had been one previous operation in 1988 but widespread public opposition caused the government to end the program. The reignition of the policy in 2008 clearly demonstrates a change in public opinion from 1988. The 2008 policy was lobbied for by Mariela Castro (daughter of Raul Castro), who represented 28 Cubans who petitioned for the surgery at the time. Cuban doctors do not yet have the expertise to perform the surgeries, so the government invited Dutch surgeons to the island each year to perform up to five sex reassignments. Mariela Castro leads National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX). CENESEX is the only LQBT organization in Cuba because it is state-run. Other organizations are not allotted state support and are therefore illegal. The organization is a visible and globally acclaimed group that has successfully lobbied the government for many LGBT initiatives. While the organization benefits the Cuban people, it is important to note that it is led by a member of the Castro family and is given priority and funding by the state. These recognitions both empower and undermine the organization. Other organizations are not allowed in Cuba and likely the organization is favored because of Mariela Castro’s familial status. Also, due to the backing of the government, the organization is careful to promote initiatives within certain boundaries. Mariela Castro has spoken abroad on the situation in Cuba and is always careful to use state approved language, even referring to UMAP as training camps. LGBT Cubans have referred to her as a government propaganda machine designed to garner international support from LGBTQ accepting countries. However, regardless of the drawbacks of the program, it has prompted real change and benefitted many Cubans.

In addition to state provided sex reassignment surgeries, CENESEX also lobbied for improved sexual education and access to antiretroviral drugs and condoms— policies that are now in effect. Many of these policies are radical in a country that was strongly opposed to LGBTQ rights fairly recently. The government also passed anti-discrimination law in employment based on sexual orientation in 2016. Notably, Mariela Castro (a Cuban Assembly member) cast the only dissenting vote in Cuban history when voting on this policy as it did not protect transgender people. While her dissent is of little political consequence as the policy was going to vote regardless, it still drew attention to the drawbacks of the policy and antiquated sentiments of the Assembly. This balancing act is one perfected by CENESEX as it pushes the government to reform from the safety of its umbrella provided to it by the Castro family name. However, regardless of the drawbacks of the policy, the improvements that Cuba made in favor of LGBTQ rights in recently times have elevated it to one of the best countries in the Caribbean for LGBTQ individuals. Amnesty International’s Caribbean Team has stated that Cuba is “one of the most advanced countries in the protection and promotion of the rights of LGBTI people in the sub-region.” While more changes are needed, Cuba is leading the region with changing policy, changing public sentiment, and even changing government attitudes.

One of the most surprising changes for LGBTQ individuals in Cuba arrived by way of an interview with Fidel Castro. In 2010 Castro interviews with La Jornada newspapers in Mexico claiming responsibility for the negative treatment of gays. In an article titled “Soy el responsable de la persecución a homosexuales que hubo en Cuba” (I am responsible for the persecution of homosexuals in Cuba), Fidel blames himself for the persecution of LGBTQ individuals and called the regime’s past actions a ‘great injustice.’ Castro then continues to explain that after the regime’s actions it was hard to find alliances with European countries as their image of Cuba had deteriorated. This need for international alliance likely sparked some of the aforementioned changes. Also notable is the changing sentiment of Miami Cubans. Cuba is dependent on support from Miami Cubans and received $5.1 billion in remittances from Miami in 2013 alone: the number has continued to grow ever since. While Cubans in Miami are historically conservative, younger Cuban-Americans are leaning further left. Today they are about 50-50 on voting records and could be affecting change as Cuba looks to please a large source of its income. Regardless of Cuban-American political sentiments in the coming years, it is evident that Cuba is already warming to social change.

Cuba has changed significantly since the beginning of the revolution. LGBTQ individuals today are less discriminated against in both an official-state capacity and by the greater population. The community has a quasi-leader in Mariela Castro and has a valiant cause to support. With each step, LGBTQ Cubans come that more closer to a free Cuba. What is necessary to push the legislation is an outpouring of international support and resistance. As stated by Human Rights Watch, “given the effectiveness of Cuba’s repressive machinery and the Castro government’s firm grip on power, the pressure needed to bring progress on human rights cannot come solely from within Cuba.” Therefore, the international community is responsible for encouraging further change within Cuba. Given the demonstrated willingness and dependence of the government on the international community, pressure should be exerted to revolutionize Cuban social policy. Pressure can come in the form of increased economic support or trade, or the withholding of such relations. Issues that need to be addressed include same-sex marriage, the ability to adopt children regardless of sex or sexuality, and further protections for the LGBTQ community. Should Cuba incorporate these changes, it will be a leader of social policy in the Caribbean and help disseminate further change. Indeed, the situation is in such a state of flex that it can be spurred in either direction and international support will guarantee that the situation tips in favor of the LGBTQ community. Action should be taken quickly while the situation is still at a culmination. With luck, time, and support, the Cuban people will win their rights.

Addendum

2/25/19

On February 24th the Cuban people voted in favor of the new Constitution. The constitution did not include the aforementioned language regarding marriage. However, the voting statistics marked notable dissent in Cuba. 87% of voters were in favor of the new constitution while 9% of votes counted were in dissent and 4% of ballots were left blank. Both the dissenting and refraining votes, in addition to those who chose not to vote, highlight a growing ease of dissent in Cuba.

Cuban Connectivity: The rise of free speech in the Digital Age

The virgin telecommunications market that is Cuba, has large tech corporations such as Amazon, Google, and Apple ready to invest as soon as restrictive United States sanctions are removed for the island to enter a smaller globalized world. Freedom of speech via global internet connection would give Cuban citizens an unprecedented arena to project their grievances, and access world information. An article by Freedom House labels Cuba as one of the world’s longest ranking repressive environments for information and communication technologies. The lack of digital communication on the island has also left the Cuban people frozen in time; and although around 27 percent of the people in Cuba have access to the internet, it is often through illegal streaming sites, extremely slow service and costly fees. But, through pressures being put on the Cuban government, by human rights campaigns, and the international community- the people of Cuba are growing ever more connected and facing less internet restrictions and punishments for projecting their beliefs. Rather than having the Cuban government see the internet as a tool of coercion, they should perceive it as a tool to unify the people

New technology, has been empowering individuals, in both positive and negative ways. And over the past couple year, the Cuban government has made progress to make internet access more feasible to its citizens, although recently this has become harder to accomplish due to the Trump  administrations rollback on Cuban – U.S. foreign policy, “cancelling” plans to ease cold- war tensions with Cuba, hindering negotiations being made by the government and companies such as Google. The Trump administration has not made it easier to for U.S. companies to provide commercial telecom and internet services, as well as to export cell phones, computers, and set up joint ventures with Cuban entities.

Technological corporations should not see this new U.S. policy as an opportunity to pull their small but growing investments, but as a reason to ensure the Cuban people that their voices will continue to be heard, because as the current President Raul Castro is proposed to retire in early 2018, Foreign Affairs magazine calls for in response to these difficulties, demands from centrist activists for a greater say in future economic decisions and in the coming leadership transition. The Cuban are already demanding more from their government, from better living conditions to more WI-FI. The people’s continuous effort to surpass government internet restrictions while pushing for better internet accessibility to promote progress and social changes within the country, should encourage more technological companies to invest more resources into infrastructure development. These internet spaces that create free speech promote movements can be important vehicles for social and political change, and have the potential to transform the systems of institutionalized politics in which they occur. Social movements can give us an insight into human action and why people voluntarily cooperate, mobilize and could have potential positive implications in the spread of democracy, or regime change.

A younger Cuban generation is hoping to emphasize the importance of internet connection for all, a “promise” their government is working to achieve for all its citizens by the year 2020, announcing plans to expand broadband access to 80 percent of business entities (private and state-owned), 95 percent of educational and health centers, and 50 percent of households by 2020. This level of connectivity would require significant investments in infrastructure, and with new regulations being rolled out by the Trump administration, unless the Cuban government supports heavy investing in their technological industries, change could take years longer than hoped for by the international community and the Cuban people.  

Cubans, have become much more aware of the power the internet possesses through projecting social justice projects to address their poor living condition, and shrinking gross domestic domestic through the closures of small businesses on the island. The internet is critical tool to advocate for government reform, and although the government believed that limiting access was for the safety and betterment of their people, it in fact, only hinders the progress the country is making toward government and economic reform.

The government has begun to take notice, of the positive possibilities that come from joining an interconnected world and has even increased education funding to computer software and computer sciences industries. Cuban universities have begun expanding their technology science curriculums, making it possible for grassroots efforts to provide more multimedia accessibility to the island. From these investments, emerges a generation of highly skilled graduates whose technical and abilities known as the “knowledge economy”, often go underdeveloped due to the lack of resources and support from the international community. In order to unlock the “knowledge economy”, the international community should aid in the WiFi revolution, by ending technological barriers between Cuba and its trading partners.

German Sociologist, Lorenz von Stein, introduced the term ‘social movement’ into scholarly discourse in the 1950’s. It conveyed the idea of a continuous, unitary process by which the whole working class gained awareness and power. Luckily, at the touch of a button, the Cuban working class is beginning to feel that power, along with the pressures and luxuries that come with internet exposure. While becoming more aware of how other people live and talking about their experiences to people all over the world, feeling that they are finally being given the chance to speak up and express their grievances and the actions other countries should be taking in order to facilitate a smooth transition of power from a communist regime to a more democratically based one.

Before the Obama administration began to normalize relations with Cuba, there was already an interconnected underground system that aimed to provide an alternative internet broadband. There is an entire informal job sector network growing out of these grassroots internet distributors working to provide affordable online streaming services to the people of Cuba. American corporations such as Netflix are beginning to stream to the island, but at 8 dollars a months, it is unaffordable to a majority of citizens that work at a wage between 20 and 60 dollars a month. More needs to be done by the government to support these efforts to secure the economic future of its small business and technological informal sector.

Weak infrastructure and innovation-stifling corruption are just some of the obstacles technological companies have been facing. Investing in telecommunications towers, and creeping away from government run-wifi would be a huge step in providing accessible internet. Since 2008, when the Cuban government lifted an almost total ban on the World Wide Web, there has been a skyrocketing number of Cubans beginning to engage in internet consumption. While Cuba remains one of the world’s least connected societies, ordinary citizens’ access to the internet has exploded since 2015 due to the government’s opening of over 200 public WiFi spots in parks and street corners all over the country. With an increasing number of WiFi hotspots becoming available to the public, spending the day outside scrolling through phones is becoming a daily routine for a younger Cuban generation. We are not only seeing WiFi being provided in hotel lobbies, and internet cafe’s; today’s WiFi availability in public spaces is creating a new type of socialization among the people.When most Americans think of internet consumption they picture a recluse teenager sitting, spending the entire day inside; but in Cuba, where internet at home is a rare luxury, many people have to go outside to public spaces to get connected.

Social movements are caused changes in organizational structures such as economic, institutional and social contexts of a country occur. In this context by growing the country’s access to social media,these changes in structural conditions make movements more likely. Social movements are not created by a single variable but rather by a set of variables that create an interaction effect, but successful movements are about mobilizing people for action and when they can persuade a significant amount of people that their cause is relevant and significant to the society’s betterment.

People in parks now sharing with each other what they find on the internet and holding discussions about what they are missing out on is just a stepping stone in the reform the Cuban people are hoping to achieve.  The internet being used as a tool for mobilization is giving their cause more attention and deeply worrying communist supporters who are wary about the impact it would have on the future of their party and political life on the island.  Discovering new ways to mass organize is just as essential for the occurrence of social movements as the grievances that would intrigue the people to organize in the first place, and social media is just one of the many websites giving voices to those people who would have not had one. By having ordinary people challenge the status quo and expressing their grievances in public spaces, potentially could lead to a new social movement. This is a step up from the extremely slow internet connection, and government run websites where most of the material posted was censored, and privacy rights violated.

Improving the ability of Cubans to the connect with the rest of the world will help foster economic growth and improve human rights on the island.

By being able to engage in discussions on relevant issues facing the community in open spaces with others listening,could one day lead to a new type of government for and by the people. Freedom of expression in internet communities could potentially lead a younger more exposed generation to radicalize through exposure to centrist, capitalist policies. This new type WiFi revolution would open the people of Cuba to unlimited reproduction and instantaneous distribution of digitized intellectual property of any kind worldwide virtually without cost.

The Cuban people do not want their growing right taken away, nor do they want to abuse their newly found power. Pressuring government authorities to facilitate talks with representatives from companies such as Google and Amazon to build partnerships and secure the economic future of small businesses, would open the door to new economic endeavors and allow declining industries that have been hindered by slow or no internet connection to prospers on the island.It may take some time to see some government reforms in Cuba by the people, but the eagerness and willingness by the people is there, they just need a better outlet to form a platform and united coalition.

Charles Tilly, who also defined social movements as a series of contentious performances, displays and campaigns by which ordinary people make collective claims on others, would agree when I say, that in a competitive world; in order to succeed we must be capable of handling technology in an appropriate matter, to express those opinions that matter the most to us, in order to catch up to other leading global players and not stay trapped in the 1950’s as Cuba once was.