Cubans Flee

From the BBC:
"Panama to close Colombia border to halt Cuba migrants"

 Key crossings on Panama's border with Colombia are to be closed to control the flow of Cuban migrants heading to the United States.  President Juan Carlos Varela said the decision was necessary as Costa Rica and Nicaragua had recently closed their borders to Cubans heading north. Panama has also agreed to transfer more than 3,500 Cubans hoping to reach the US to a town in northern Mexico.

President Varela said the flights to Mexico could last two to three weeks. The Cubans have been stranded in Panama for months. They are hoping to reach the US under a decades-old law which gives them privileged entry and a fast track to residency.  The number of Cubans trying to reach the US has increased lately because of fears that warming relations between the two countries could mean the end of the preferential treatment they receive.

^ Some people say this sounds like what happened in Europe in the 1980s when thousands fled Communism for Western Europe. I don't think it really does. Back in the 1980s people went from one Communist country to another Communist country with the hope of getting to a non-Communist country (ie East Germans going to Hungary to get to West Germany.) Here the Cubans are going to a non-Communist country to get to the United States. That may not seem like a big difference but it is. The East Germans had to pretend they were going to Hungary on vacation and then had to stay at the West German Embassy not knowing if they would be allowed to freedom or sent back to East Germany and prison. The Cubans are allowed to freely leave Cuba and go to Colombia and could stay there - a non-Communist country - without fear of being sent to prison in Cuba. They would just rather go to the US because of the law that states that any Cuban that reaches American soil automatically gets permanent residency. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36252711