There is absolutely no doubt that the Cuban economy is suffering through a severe crisis. However, mass emigration offers some benefits to the Communist regime. Many of the migrants who work in the USA send money back to their families in Cuba in the form of remittances, which provide valuable foreign exchange reserves to help pay for essential imports. Moreover, emigration provides an escape for those people who might otherwise form a potentially powerful class of under-employed and politically discontent civilians. If Cuba’s emigrants were still living on the island, then the Communist regime would have good reason to worry about a mass revolution, as shown by the experience of the Arab Spring, when authoritarian governments in Syria, Libya and Egypt, each struggling with rising demographic pressures and economic stagnation, were destabilized by popular rebellion. The Communist elite is certainly aware of the dangers to its regime from a potential “Cuban Spring,” and thus likely regards mass emigration as a welcome alternative, despite the obvious social liabilities of losing so much human capital.
Ha. You should go to Cuba. They are as clever as any other group of humans and they all have family in Florida.
I’m sure you can’t just wire the money from a US bank to a Cuban one, but they surely have ways to do it. The island is full of stuff from America they aren’t supposed to have.
According to the Western Union website, the company "is resuming its money transfer service between the U.S. and Cuba. Following the tightening of laws by the U.S. government in 2020, services had to be suspended leaving those wishing to send money to Cuba from USA with limited and expensive options. Now that some restrictions have been lifted, Western Union is gradually bringing back limited money transfer services from the U.S. to Cuba."
As a Miami native, I can tell you for a fact Cuban remittances do indeed happen. The sanctions loosened after the Obama admin d'tente even after the Trump admin restored most of the controls. My alma matter https://cri.fiu.edu/cuban-america/remittance/ has a continued focus of research to see how much flows go back to island nation.
Anyway tl;dr is that Cubans use: https://havanaship.net/nueva-agencia-de-remesas-a-cuba-orbit, which is a gov't controlled remittance operator. As of commenting isn't on the OFAC controlled entity list. It used to be sanctioned after the previous remittance operator was associated with the Cuban Army but is now in compliance.
