Mises Wire

How Presidential Politics in Florida Wag the Dog on Cuba

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Mises Wire Ryan McMaken

One of the unfortunate side effects of the United States’s relatively laissez-faire attitude toward immigration is that some who come to the US for political reasons bring their politics with them and want American taxpayers to fight their old battles for them back in the old country.

Witness, for example, how some of the most vociferous proponents of American belligerence against Russia are either Russian expatriates or from countries that have a long and unpleasant history with Russia. They’re welcome to their opinions, of course, and they’re also welcome to join military and dissident groups back in the old country.  But it’s certainly not the job of the local population here in America to bear the costs of those conflicts to satisfy the wants of what is nothing more than an ethnically-based interest group.

This situation certainly appears to apply to the pro-embargo segments of the Cuban refugee community in the United States which for over 50 years has been demanding that American taxpayers, merchants, and consumers pay the price of the anti-Cuban embargo.

This interest group has managed to exercise outsized influence in American politics for many years partly because the refugees are hard workers and have managed to make a lot of money since they were effectively forced out by Castro decades ago. That money has bought influence. But they’ve also been very lucky as well in that the Cuban refugees settled in Florida, and Florida has long been a key state when it comes to winning national elections. Arguably, this influence has grown even more so in recent years as Florida has become even more competitive in the electoral college.

Whether in the primaries or in the general election, Republican candidates for president (since the Cuban refugee community tends to lean Republican) must kowtow to pro-embargo groups or risk losing the state of Florida, and with it, the election. And of course, Republicans running for statewide office in Florida must do the same.

This has allowed the pro-embargo activists within the Cuban refugee community to exercise a vise-like grip on this aspect of American foreign policy, and has greatly prolonged an obviously useless and anti-freedom embargo against the Cuban regime (which in turn impoverishes the Cuban people).

Because of this, in spite of the fact that polls show that a majority of Americans have been supporting the lifting of the embargo for 15 years, most national politicians are nonetheless too afraid to lift it. 

Image source. 

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