Former Cuban Prisoners Seek Refuge in US
HAVANA TIMES — Two years after being sent to Spain thanks to the mediation of the Catholic Church, 45 former Cuban political prisoners have already traveled to the US in search of means to support their families, reported the Café Fuerte website.
“Our situation is more than terrible,” said Julio Cesar Galvez, who came to Madrid in the first group and is currently hoping to travel to the US. “The situation is closed and they don’t want us here – that’s the reality. We shouldn’t fool ourselves.”
Between July 2010 and April of last year, the Cuban government released 115 prisoners and sent them and 647 of their relatives and friends to Spain, which took them in under a plan that provided them government assistance for one year.
That aid program has now ended, leaving them in a critical situation due to the economic crisis hitting Europe.
I am quite unsympathetic to this group of exiles. I realize that paternalistic nature of Cuban society has fashioned generations of Cubans ill-prepared to function outside of Cuba but that these exiles continue to expect a government hand-out is unacceptable. What happened to the high measure of literacy and cultural exposure that Cubans allegedly possess. How does that often-touted characteristic translate to finding a job? Life is hard everywhere for just about everybody. The sooner these guys realize that the better they will be able to take full advantage of the freedoms that lay before them.
Perhaps this should have been considered from the beginning..There is no place like home Pro/con Suffice that we all learn some later or sooner than others. Emigrating/Immigrating is never easy