Looks like the main reason is - Cuba's two main benefactors stopped supplying fuel on the cheap, as they have their hands full with their own crises.
Not just internal policies and procedures, but consider that tourism is Cuba's #1 industry. And not many of us Canadians, etc. were heading down there spring 2020, winter 2021 or even winter 2022...
It's a no brainer to see no one ever wanted to live in Cuba. Trick is having a place to go. Until the politically opportunistic immigration loophole was closed this year, they had.
Q: "What would happen in Saudi Arabia if Communism triumphed there?"
A: "First, shortage of oil, later, shortage of sand."
Edit: for all the downvoters, shortages were our daily lived experience when I was a kid. I still remember chasing such rare stuff as "kid's sneakers" or "toilet paper".
And Czechoslovakia was still better off than neighbouring Poland, where you could walk into a shop and find literally nothing in the shelves.
The black market was the only thing that reliably worked.
Publicly owned businesses had no incentives to compete on quality, had to fulfill centralized plans designed by distant bureaucrats that weren't completely attached to reality. Western products were mostly unavailable or extremely costly, so no substitution possible. Lots of ossified monopolies. Factory leaders were often chosen on the base of being someone's nephew or protégé rather than expert.
If you applied for a phone line (plain old copper wire), you could wait up to 10 years before you actually got it, as there was a waiting list of 300 000 applicants in a country of 15 million ... ugh. The mess.
It is hard to describe the omnipresent dysfunction of everyday life back then. Communism was a theoretical system dreamed out by intellectuals who never engaged in any commerce. All the violent oppression aside, economic side of Communism was just crazily inefficient.
My country (Brazil) has been slowly becoming socialist over decades. Today we live under the rule of a socialist president, a communist supreme court. This is reality despite the fact Venezuela and Argentina are our neighbours. There are way too many people here who actually believe in this nonsense.
I worry a lot about the future.
What loophole changed?
The Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 still applies. They get automatic Green Cards. Not sure it is fair to call legislation implicitly giving them work permits and a path to residency a loophole.