EVEN DOCTORS DON'T WANT TO BE SERFS OF THE STATE

NYTIMES:

Cuban doctors have been fleeing to South Florida since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, but the pace intensified after 2006, when the Department of Homeland Security began a program that allowed Cuban medical personnel “who study or work in a third country under the direction of the Cuban government” to travel to the United States legally. The program has effectively turned a crowning achievement of Cuba’s foreign policy on its head.

In the 50 years since the revolution, Cuba has sent more than 185,000 health professionals on medical missions to at least 103 countries. About 31,000, most of them doctors, are in Venezuela, where they work in exchange for cheap oil and other trade benefits for the Cuban government.

And more are in the pipeline. Cuba’s official news agency reported that more than 25,000 health professionals graduated this year, “the largest graduation ever.”
But many doctors on the island are now vying to be tapped for an international mission, in part because they know that no matter where they are sent, they will be one step closer to a visa to the United States.

The missions have earned Cuba much recognition, goodwill and bargaining power. President Obama told reporters at the end of a recent hemispheric meeting in Trinidad that he found it “interesting” to learn from Latin American leaders “about the thousands of doctors from Cuba that are dispersed all throughout the region, and upon which many of these countries heavily depend.”

Yet for many Cuban doctors, who earn the equivalent of $25 a month, the lure of a life of freedom and opportunities in the United States is too strong to resist. And so these children of the revolution, educated by a Communist regime to reject capitalism and embrace socialism, have ended up in Miami, often tending to elderly Cubans who fled the island before they were born.

AWESOME! THEY'D RATHER LIVE FREE AND BE NURSES THAN BE DOCTORS FOR COMMIES! AWESOME!

IF THINGS WERE REALLY BETTER IN CUBA THEN THEY'D STAY!

This reminds me of a true story about a Russian emigre friend of mine. She was a child in Russia - the daughter of actors from a long LONG line of distinguished Russian actors. She managed to escape, coming to the USA. But she never managed to get a job in the theater. Her English wasn't good enough. Luckily for her her graphic art skills were good enough to enable her to be a successful designer/artist. She made good money. Married. Had a daughter.

When Gorbachev - in a desperate attempt to save socialism - opened up the USSR, she went back with her daughter.

She called her old boyfriend and arranged to meet him at the Post Office. (She sent her daughter to look at the old apartment building so she could be alone with him for the afternoon!) But he never showed up. She saw someone who might have been him - but who looked afraid to greet an obvious wealthy tourist in public ans shied away, disappearing back into the crowd. Her daughter returned with her own disappointment: she couldn't find the place, and when she asked people where the street was they replied - with Stalinist fear in their voices, "Why do you want to know?!

Later, she took her daughter back to the theater her family had acted in for generations. Once a Tsarist theater it had become a State Theater reduced to perform commie crap to empty houses. (Meanwhile, a coffee house around the corner put on Shakespeare plays in their basement to packed houses!) After the dreadful social realist play, she went back stage and introduced herself. To her amazement some of the older actors remembered her and were in awe of her family. They shared Vodka. And then they insisted on taking her out on to stage. The stage her family had ruled for generations. It was the stage she had appeared on a few times as a little girl - where she had always believed her dreams would come true- her dreams and her family's.

And you know what she felt as she stood there on that stage? With the spotlight turned on her and the memories and dreams pouring in on her, surrounding her - the imagined applause, the dreamed for critical raves --- you know what she felt?

She felt so lucky to be living in the USA and to be FREE.

Yes: she'd rather be free then live in the place where she thought her dreams would come true. Dreams that never came true.

She was glad she left her home, her native land - the stage where her dreams NEARLY came true - for a strange land where nothing was guaranteed except FREEDOM.

That's a guarantee now under threat.

Never take it for granted. The Russian and Cuban and Vietnamese emigres never do.