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As a descendant of Cuban refugees I have to thank fate that my grandfather had the foresight and conviction to abandon everything and come to the United States.

As a descendant of Cuban refugees I have to thank fate that my grandfather had the foresight and conviction to abandon everything and come to the United States. Just the thought that through a few twists of fate I could have been born in some totalitarian nightmare state is enough to give me chills. I must urge everyone that is against the US taking in refugees to consider that by banning refugees we are trapping people in places most of us would consider to be Hell.

eberfreitas 8y ago
For a lot of americans driven out of their homes by gigantic medical bills, the US is hell...
- derekp7 8y ago
  I've not heard of any hospital taking a person's house to pay a medical bill. Typically it goes into collections and on your credit report. Now a lowered credit score will affect the ability to get loans, possibly needed to effect repairs on a home, but that is a bit more of a stretch. And if it goes to court then wages can be garnished, affecting your ability to pay a mortgage -- but I believe that garnished wages are limited. Oh, and if you pay almost any amount on a monthly basis towards a medical bill, then that can keep it out of collections too.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    > I've not heard of any hospital taking a person's house to pay a medical bill. Nor I. That might actually be an improvement. What we have instead is people dying because they couldn't afford lifesaving treatment in the first place, and banks taking other people's houses for no reason at all.
xor1 8y ago
>Just the thought that through a few twists of fate I could have been born in some totalitarian nightmare state is enough to give me chills. I'm curious about this line of thinking. Do you think your specific consciousness was being held in reserve somewhere, and it would have been placed into a mortal body regardless of when you were due to come into being? Plus if your grandfather had stayed in Cuba, who's to say your parents would have still met, started a relationship, and conceived a child? The way I see it, I only exist because of the exact series of events leading up to that one moment where I was conceived. I exist because of a combination of a specific sperm and a specific egg. All sorts of factors contributed to all of us getting extremely lucky, even up to the final hours, minutes, and seconds before fertilization. We won, and we denied a countless number of other potential minds the privilege of existence. There's no way to prove it of course, but I feel like a different sperm being responsible for fertilization would have meant I would have never existed at all. My parents would have had a different child with a different consciousness. Even if a specific consciousness is tied to the egg itself, that gives a window based on the menstrual cycle.
- facing_worlds 8y ago
  I really don't think he means it in the deep philosophical sense of unique personal identity but more the fact that if the situation has been different whoever his grandfathers descents were (if any) would have radically different options in life.
- friedman23 8y ago
  >I'm curious about this line of thinking. Do you think your specific consciousness was being held in reserve somewhere, and it would have been placed into a mortal body regardless of when it happened? No I don't.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  The value and equality of human life is fungible. Doesn't really matter who is who.
- JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
  Perhaps I am being a bit obtuse, but I think while I personally agree with your line of thought, the original thought is a hypothetical that could never happen anyway (we can't wind back time), so it's kind of a moot point in either case, as I'm fairly sure the OP didn't mean it like that and was just using it as a contrast to demonstrate to people how immigrants benefit from migration and are thankful and feel lucky to be in a country such as the US.
lr4444lr 8y ago
Quite a lot of people who support unbridled refugees come from the same end of the political spectrum where could be found most of the apologists for the regime your grandfather fled.
- meowface 8y ago
  You're conflating support for communist economic systems with humanitarian leanings. There's certainly overlap between diehard communists and strong humanitarians, but especially with an anti-human rights state like Cuba, anyone holding both ideas simultaneously is undergoing some serious cognitive dissonance. The point you're trying to make is very shoddily constructed.
billfruit 8y ago
Aren't people better off in Cuba than say Haiti? Perhaps,for some quality of life matters more than lack of democracy.
- xrd 8y ago
  I lived in Brazil. I would say that after visiting Cuba and comparing it to Brazil, Cubans seem much less desperate than poor Brazilians, and the violence is incomparable. Cubans "enjoy" a decent educational system and while there are zero opportunities outside the state run fiascos, there are worse places to be, like I imagine Haiti would be.
- volkl48 8y ago
  Haiti is not exactly a functioning democracy. It was a dictatorship until 1986 and the first elected leader to actually serve a full term without getting overthrown in a coup was Rene Preval (2006-11). Their most recent elections were a mess as well. At best they're starting to become a democracy.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Cuba’s overall quality of life is impressive considering it is a small poor country with few natural resources (e.g. most of the forests were cleared by European slaver plantation owners) which was in the 1950s a quasi-feudal society with a one-crop economy, lacking infrastructure, and weak institutions, and has been battered by decades of economic attack by its obvious large trading partner. Compared to every country in Latin America where US allies had control from the mid-20th century onward, the Cuban people have done very well. They have cheap housing, a cheap and effective healthcare system, cheap transportation, cheap and effective education, etc. Most importantly, they haven’t been subjected to decades of widespread terror by fascist autocrats or bloody civil war, the way many Latin American countries were. In a counterfactual world where Batista was left in charge 60 years ago, it’s hard to imagine the Cuban people would be doing as well as they are. If US foreign policy in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Revolution had not been so overtly hostile, and if US policymakers for decades afterward had not been so paranoid and short-sighted, it is quite possible that the Cuban political system would have turned out significantly differently. US attempted invasion, attempted assassinations, crippling embargoes, constant threats, etc. forced the Cuban government into a very defensive posture (both internally and externally), just for self preservation. I’m not a big fan of the political leadership of Cuba, or the lack of political rights there, but objectively it is a pretty okay place to live (being poor in Cuba is probably better than being poor in the USA). The GP’s characterization as “hell” is likely colored by decades of US (and Cuban-American) propaganda bordering on outright lies.
TheAceOfHearts 8y ago
The US has historically accepted more refugees than every other country in the world put together [0]. Some of people's criticisms about refugees are totally valid. Unless a person is willing to integrate with their host country's society and accept their culture, you won't be welcomed in. I think that's a very reasonable bar to hold people to. I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees, so that seems like a bit of a strawman. Having some kind of limit seems reasonable, and other countries can help to balance things out. I'm not sufficiently educated on the subject to comment on the factors which might've influenced us to reduce our cap. Maybe the number of refugees we accept should be different, I genuinely don't know. But ultimately, not everyone has to come to the US. Why aren't you criticizing all these other countries that barely take in refugees? The US is still accepting a very large number of refugees relative to the rest of the world. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/refugee-resettlement-us-2018-trump-refugees-migrants-worldwide-a8435711.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
- friedman23 8y ago
  >Some of people's criticisms about refugees are totally valid. What are the valid criticisms? I don't know of any. >Unless a person is willing to integrate with their host country's society and accept their culture, you won't be welcomed in. I think that's a very reasonable bar to hold people to. This argument is not convincing to me at all. I've lived in California, New York, and Florida and if your requirement for refugees is to learn the culture of all these different places I would say it's impossible. How does people coming to the United States, speaking a different language, eating different food, and holding different beliefs affect your life in any way? >I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees, so that seems like a bit of a strawman. I think this is dishonest. Many people are calling for an outright ban on refugees. >Why aren't you criticizing all these other countries that barely take in refugees? Because I'm not a citizen of other countries and I actually believe refugees and immigrants in general are good for this country.
  - ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
    >How does people coming to the United States, speaking a different language, eating different food, and holding different beliefs affect your life in any way? Eventually it becomes South Miami where there are parts where workers don't speak English. Kind of sucks when you try to order from a butcher shop and have to point at the meat and then the grinder. >>I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees, so that seems like a bit of a strawman. >I think this is dishonest. Many people are calling for an outright ban on refugees. Yea it's impossible to really argue this. Some do yes. Many just want increased vetting. Language is all I really care about. I don't understand how you can mesh with a society at all if you can't even speak to them. Eat and do whatever the hell you want, at the very least know English though.
myegorov 8y ago
A citizen of any country would be well advised to first and foremost guard their self-interest. One might argue that accepting immigrants is against the self-interest of the native born/legal resident majority. Speaking as a refugee from what you consider to be Hell (USSR).
- sjg007 8y ago
  It’s actually not against your self interest.
IIAOPSW 8y ago
You want to talk about good timing. My Great Great Grandfather left czarist Russia around 1904 (today it is part of Belarus). He was dodging conscription into the Russo-Japanese war. He saved up and was then able to pay for my Great Grandfather to come over at age 13. My Great Grandfather barely missed out on the Bolshevik Revolution. A few years after that Hitler wiped the whole Shetl off the map. I've been in the states long enough that when someone asks my ancestry "American" is the most reasonable answer. Yet you won't see me succumbing to the vulgar fashion of the nativist nationalists with their anti-refugee, anti-immigrant rhetoric. Unless you're native American, you're a boat person. If I can still see it despite several generations between me and the boat, then others must be purposefully obtuse. As someone that arguably stands to gain from the redefining of American identity in terms of ancestry, I just got to say these blood and soil people are un-American.
- toyg 8y ago
  It's weird how the US and USSR fought an ideological battle for 70 years, where both systems claimed to have overcome the retrograde link to "blood and soil" that European nations insisted on... and now the fight is over, they've both reverted to the most tribal nationalistic instincts. Sometimes it feels like Man will never learn.
fbmac 8y ago
What about places that we consider like the purgatory? I almost want my country to get worse so I can get into the US as a regugee.

eberfreitas 8y ago

For a lot of americans driven out of their homes by gigantic medical bills, the US is hell...

derekp7 8y ago
I've not heard of any hospital taking a person's house to pay a medical bill. Typically it goes into collections and on your credit report. Now a lowered credit score will affect the ability to get loans, possibly needed to effect repairs on a home, but that is a bit more of a stretch. And if it goes to court then wages can be garnished, affecting your ability to pay a mortgage -- but I believe that garnished wages are limited. Oh, and if you pay almost any amount on a monthly basis towards a medical bill, then that can keep it out of collections too.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  > I've not heard of any hospital taking a person's house to pay a medical bill. Nor I. That might actually be an improvement. What we have instead is people dying because they couldn't afford lifesaving treatment in the first place, and banks taking other people's houses for no reason at all.

xor1 8y ago

>Just the thought that through a few twists of fate I could have been born in some totalitarian nightmare state is enough to give me chills. I'm curious about this line of thinking. Do you think your specific consciousness was being held in reserve somewhere, and it would have been placed into a mortal body regardless of when you were due to come into being? Plus if your grandfather had stayed in Cuba, who's to say your parents would have still met, started a relationship, and conceived a child? The way I see it, I only exist because of the exact series of events leading up to that one moment where I was conceived. I exist because of a combination of a specific sperm and a specific egg. All sorts of factors contributed to all of us getting extremely lucky, even up to the final hours, minutes, and seconds before fertilization. We won, and we denied a countless number of other potential minds the privilege of existence. There's no way to prove it of course, but I feel like a different sperm being responsible for fertilization would have meant I would have never existed at all. My parents would have had a different child with a different consciousness. Even if a specific consciousness is tied to the egg itself, that gives a window based on the menstrual cycle.

facing_worlds 8y ago
I really don't think he means it in the deep philosophical sense of unique personal identity but more the fact that if the situation has been different whoever his grandfathers descents were (if any) would have radically different options in life.
friedman23 8y ago
>I'm curious about this line of thinking. Do you think your specific consciousness was being held in reserve somewhere, and it would have been placed into a mortal body regardless of when it happened? No I don't.
Waterluvian 8y ago
The value and equality of human life is fungible. Doesn't really matter who is who.
JauntyHatAngle 8y ago
Perhaps I am being a bit obtuse, but I think while I personally agree with your line of thought, the original thought is a hypothetical that could never happen anyway (we can't wind back time), so it's kind of a moot point in either case, as I'm fairly sure the OP didn't mean it like that and was just using it as a contrast to demonstrate to people how immigrants benefit from migration and are thankful and feel lucky to be in a country such as the US.

lr4444lr 8y ago

Quite a lot of people who support unbridled refugees come from the same end of the political spectrum where could be found most of the apologists for the regime your grandfather fled.

meowface 8y ago
You're conflating support for communist economic systems with humanitarian leanings. There's certainly overlap between diehard communists and strong humanitarians, but especially with an anti-human rights state like Cuba, anyone holding both ideas simultaneously is undergoing some serious cognitive dissonance. The point you're trying to make is very shoddily constructed.

billfruit 8y ago

Aren't people better off in Cuba than say Haiti? Perhaps,for some quality of life matters more than lack of democracy.

xrd 8y ago
I lived in Brazil. I would say that after visiting Cuba and comparing it to Brazil, Cubans seem much less desperate than poor Brazilians, and the violence is incomparable. Cubans "enjoy" a decent educational system and while there are zero opportunities outside the state run fiascos, there are worse places to be, like I imagine Haiti would be.
volkl48 8y ago
Haiti is not exactly a functioning democracy. It was a dictatorship until 1986 and the first elected leader to actually serve a full term without getting overthrown in a coup was Rene Preval (2006-11). Their most recent elections were a mess as well. At best they're starting to become a democracy.
jacobolus 8y ago
Cuba’s overall quality of life is impressive considering it is a small poor country with few natural resources (e.g. most of the forests were cleared by European slaver plantation owners) which was in the 1950s a quasi-feudal society with a one-crop economy, lacking infrastructure, and weak institutions, and has been battered by decades of economic attack by its obvious large trading partner. Compared to every country in Latin America where US allies had control from the mid-20th century onward, the Cuban people have done very well. They have cheap housing, a cheap and effective healthcare system, cheap transportation, cheap and effective education, etc. Most importantly, they haven’t been subjected to decades of widespread terror by fascist autocrats or bloody civil war, the way many Latin American countries were. In a counterfactual world where Batista was left in charge 60 years ago, it’s hard to imagine the Cuban people would be doing as well as they are. If US foreign policy in the immediate aftermath of the Cuban Revolution had not been so overtly hostile, and if US policymakers for decades afterward had not been so paranoid and short-sighted, it is quite possible that the Cuban political system would have turned out significantly differently. US attempted invasion, attempted assassinations, crippling embargoes, constant threats, etc. forced the Cuban government into a very defensive posture (both internally and externally), just for self preservation. I’m not a big fan of the political leadership of Cuba, or the lack of political rights there, but objectively it is a pretty okay place to live (being poor in Cuba is probably better than being poor in the USA). The GP’s characterization as “hell” is likely colored by decades of US (and Cuban-American) propaganda bordering on outright lies.

TheAceOfHearts 8y ago

The US has historically accepted more refugees than every other country in the world put together [0]. Some of people's criticisms about refugees are totally valid. Unless a person is willing to integrate with their host country's society and accept their culture, you won't be welcomed in. I think that's a very reasonable bar to hold people to. I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees, so that seems like a bit of a strawman. Having some kind of limit seems reasonable, and other countries can help to balance things out. I'm not sufficiently educated on the subject to comment on the factors which might've influenced us to reduce our cap. Maybe the number of refugees we accept should be different, I genuinely don't know. But ultimately, not everyone has to come to the US. Why aren't you criticizing all these other countries that barely take in refugees? The US is still accepting a very large number of refugees relative to the rest of the world. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/refugee-resettlement-us-2018-trump-refugees-migrants-worldwide-a8435711.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

friedman23 8y ago
>Some of people's criticisms about refugees are totally valid. What are the valid criticisms? I don't know of any. >Unless a person is willing to integrate with their host country's society and accept their culture, you won't be welcomed in. I think that's a very reasonable bar to hold people to. This argument is not convincing to me at all. I've lived in California, New York, and Florida and if your requirement for refugees is to learn the culture of all these different places I would say it's impossible. How does people coming to the United States, speaking a different language, eating different food, and holding different beliefs affect your life in any way? >I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees, so that seems like a bit of a strawman. I think this is dishonest. Many people are calling for an outright ban on refugees. >Why aren't you criticizing all these other countries that barely take in refugees? Because I'm not a citizen of other countries and I actually believe refugees and immigrants in general are good for this country.
- ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
  >How does people coming to the United States, speaking a different language, eating different food, and holding different beliefs affect your life in any way? Eventually it becomes South Miami where there are parts where workers don't speak English. Kind of sucks when you try to order from a butcher shop and have to point at the meat and then the grinder. >>I haven't seen anyone seriously calling for an outright ban of all refugees, so that seems like a bit of a strawman. >I think this is dishonest. Many people are calling for an outright ban on refugees. Yea it's impossible to really argue this. Some do yes. Many just want increased vetting. Language is all I really care about. I don't understand how you can mesh with a society at all if you can't even speak to them. Eat and do whatever the hell you want, at the very least know English though.

myegorov 8y ago

A citizen of any country would be well advised to first and foremost guard their self-interest. One might argue that accepting immigrants is against the self-interest of the native born/legal resident majority. Speaking as a refugee from what you consider to be Hell (USSR).

sjg007 8y ago
It’s actually not against your self interest.

IIAOPSW 8y ago

You want to talk about good timing. My Great Great Grandfather left czarist Russia around 1904 (today it is part of Belarus). He was dodging conscription into the Russo-Japanese war. He saved up and was then able to pay for my Great Grandfather to come over at age 13. My Great Grandfather barely missed out on the Bolshevik Revolution. A few years after that Hitler wiped the whole Shetl off the map. I've been in the states long enough that when someone asks my ancestry "American" is the most reasonable answer. Yet you won't see me succumbing to the vulgar fashion of the nativist nationalists with their anti-refugee, anti-immigrant rhetoric. Unless you're native American, you're a boat person. If I can still see it despite several generations between me and the boat, then others must be purposefully obtuse. As someone that arguably stands to gain from the redefining of American identity in terms of ancestry, I just got to say these blood and soil people are un-American.

toyg 8y ago
It's weird how the US and USSR fought an ideological battle for 70 years, where both systems claimed to have overcome the retrograde link to "blood and soil" that European nations insisted on... and now the fight is over, they've both reverted to the most tribal nationalistic instincts. Sometimes it feels like Man will never learn.

fbmac 8y ago

What about places that we consider like the purgatory? I almost want my country to get worse so I can get into the US as a regugee.