Most recent media attention on Cuba has focused on the health of long-time leader Fidel Castro. But while everyone has been reading the tea leaves in Havana, more Cubans have been quietly fleeing to the United States than ever before. According to a report by the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, nearly 77,000 Cubans crossed into the United States in 2006 and 2007. That's more than twice the number of refugees who arrived on Florida's shores during the summer of 1994, when more than 38,000 Cubans fled the island after Castro opened the ports to all who wished to leave. If the current trend holds, the United States will have received 267,000 Cuban immigrants this decade. That's more than any other decade since Castro took power in 1959.
The current flow from Cuba is not due to political persecution, as in years past. Surprisingly, it's the country's surging economy. Although the country's GDP grew at an impressive 11.1 percent last year, the boom hasn't translated into real employment opportunities on the ground. Younger Cubans, in particular, are disillusioned by the prospect of economic change under Raûl Castro, Fidel's brother and heir apparent. "These are, in many cases, professional Cubans--teachers, doctors, or young people who see no future on the island, and don't see Raul Castro being able to deliver soon enough," says Hans de Salas-del Valle, author of the report. Today, there are no television images of refugees desperately clinging to rafts in the Florida straits. Instead, refugees are paying thousands of dollars to smugglers who will get them out, a few people at a time.[Photo: Getty Images]
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