The Consequences Of Emigration From Cuba
Gerard Dion Cuba Unchained
Cuba’s Population Projected To Decrease By Nearly 1 Million By 2025, Driven By Low Birth Rates And Emigration. “By 2025, Cuba’s population is projected to decrease by some 1 million residents. This dramatic demographic shift — from 11 million to 10 million inhabitants — is being propelled by low fertility and birth rates, as well as high levels of emigrations, according to experts who met recently at Florida International University. Cuba also will continue to have the oldest population in Latin America. Today, 19 percent of the island’s population is older than 60, the expertssaid, and forecasts point to that number rising to 30 percent in less than a decade.” [InCubaToday,
“Cuba’s population expected to drop dramatically over the next decade,” 4/30/16]
STRAITS OF FLORIDA (July 17, 2005)–Eleven Cuban migrants attempt to reach the United States on a Chevy flatbed truck rigged with pontoons, in the Straits of Florida. USCG photo by Fireman Greg Ewald.
People Who Emigrate From Cuba Tend To Be “In The Prime Of Their Productive And Reproductive Lives. “‘Developed countries have low infant mortality, birth and fertility rates, but their populations don’t drop because they receive immigrants,’ Aja said. “But that’s not the case of Cuba.’ Until the end of the 1930s, Cuba received migrants. But since then, emigration has been sustained, with spikes during mass exodus events in the 20th Century — the Mariel boatlift in 1980 and the Rafter Crisis in 1994 — and more recently the flow of Cuban migrants through Central America and Mexico on their way to the United States. ‘Cuba cannot compete on migration even with the Dominican Republic,’ Aja said. One of the island’s main problems is that the people who emigrate are generally the youngest, in the prime of their productive and reproductive lives.” [InCubaToday, “Cuba’s population expected to drop dramatically over the next decade,” 4/30/16]
Panama Set To Expel Thousands Of Cuban Migrants Making Their Way To The U.S. “Following in Costa Rica’s steps, Panama is planning to expel thousands of Cuban migrants currently stranded in the country on their way to the U.S. A Foreign Ministry official said earlier this week that some 3,000 Cubans will be transferred to a facility near the border with Costa Rica in preparation to fly them to Mexico. Then it intends to close its borders to migrants from the island nation, according to In Cuba Today, the way Nicaragua has. More than 670 Cuban migrants are already housed in the border facility, called Los Planes shelter. At least a hundred more are now in detention on the Colombia border.” [Fox News Latino, “Panama to expel more than 3,000 U.S.-bound Cubans stranded on its border,” 5/4/16]
