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> There is absolutely no justification for continuing 60+ years of sanctions just because our puppet was deposed.

Two weeks ago Russia landed an armada there in a show of force right off the US coast. It’s not an easy black and white situation where you can just say “USA bad.”

It is, though. If US did not sanction Cuba, there very much would be no Russian visit. When US decides you are an enemy, you don't get to pick your friends.

The UN, UK, and EU have no sanctions imposed on Cuba [1]. Why has no other country prevented Cuba from "starving to death?" Honest question. Is the United States so powerful that our trade is the only thing keeping countries alive?

[1] https://globalsanctions.co.uk/region/cuba/

Secondary sanctions. If your company trades with Cuba, then companies that want to trade with the US also violate the sanctions by trading with you.

So even something as basic as opening a bank account in such circumstances isn't possible, as no bank will cut themselves off from the entire worldwide banking system just to provide you an account.

It's a complex issue, for sure, and I admit to not being well informed. I did a quick search, and Biden's administration allowed Cubans to open accounts with U.S. banks, but the Cuban government does not like giving up control. Cuba passed laws "forcing businesses to use Cuban banks for payment" [1].

[1] https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas...

This is wrong. There are no secondary sanctions against Cuba.

Cuba is poor because Cuba is Communist. They can trade with everyone except the United States, if they had anything to trade with.

The US sanctions do serve as a wonderful excuse for the Cuban government to blame the poverty they inflict upon their own citizens on the United States. Plenty of gullible people outside the country fall for it as well.

So if I, as an Irish citizen, decided to start a business that traded with Cuba, US companies would have no legal issues doing business with me?

The EU passed a statue (No 2271/96) in 1996 that blunted the US' ability to sanction EU companies for trading with Cuba.

The statue gives EU companies the ability to recover damages caused by the Helms-Burton Act. They even threatened to counter-sanction US companies making Title III complaints.

The result of multiple countries passing similar blocking statues was that the Helms-Burton Act had been suspended by every President from 1996 until 2019 when Trump decided to reactivate it.

According to an EU report on the statue, there have been threats of US legal action, but no mention of any EU company has actually been sanctioned.

> The UN, UK, and EU have no sanctions imposed on Cuba

The US is the 800 pound gorilla in the room here. The US is 90 miles off the coast of Cuba. Cuba once supplied cane sugar to the US. Now we can't of course because it might hurt the corn lobby.

Imagine if the EU imposed sanctions on the UK, an island nation just off its coast. You could say "the US is free to trade with the UK" and you'd be correct but do you think for a second it wouldn't be massively damaging to the UK economy?

> Importing fascist or fascist adjacent people who ultimately became voters has changed US politics where Florida is now a safely red state.

And on the flip side, importing Central and South Americans who are socialist or socialist adjacent and ultimately become voters has changed US politics where California and other states are now safely blue.

> I find it interesting how this aspect of immigration is so often missed or glossed over^W^W^W^Wdismissed as a right wing conspiracy theory.

South and Central Americans fall back to their catholic roots, rejecting the communism of their home country within two generations.

> And on the flip side, importing Central and South Americans

Which countries are those, exactly? I"ll refer you to:

- "South American Immigrants in the United States" [1];

- "Hispanics and Latinos in California" [2].

Now California's single largest ethnicity is Hispanic. Nearly all are of Mexican descent. They're underrepresented in voting though where the typical California voter is still older and white [3].

We have Venezuelan refugees now. Their government is ostensibly socialist. So Venezuelan refugees have similar leanings to Cuban immigrants.

Colombians are a large group there. One exit poll suggested roughly half voted for Trump in 2020 [4].

The point is that the Latino and Hispanic vote is complicated and certainly not monolithic.

[1]: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/south-american-immig...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanics_and_Latinos_in_Calif...

[3]: https://calmatters.org/newsletters/whatmatters/2023/08/calif...

[4]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/populist-leftist-colombi...