GfS - For the exact same reason that no one is illegally emigrating from the USA and Canada south to Mexico and the rest of Latin America by swimming south across the Rio Grande under cover of darkness.

They're materially and financially poorer than we are, so they attempt to emigrate illegally. Illegal immigrants always flow from a poorer place to a richer one. Poor people swim and take little leaky boats. Rich people (meaning us) drive cars, get on planes, and go on paid vacation packages to the places that the poor people swim from.

My point was not that Cubans are better off than WE are. It was that they're far better off than most other Latin Americans are, and if any Latin American country was a short boat ride from Florida, they'd be trying to swim to Florida!!!!!!!!!!   NOT BECAUSE OF FUCKING SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BECAUSE THEY ARE FUCKING POOR!!!!!!!!!!!!! Poorer than we are...materially speaking.

They're not poorer in spirit, though. I've been there, and they make the average North Americans look like a bunch of overfed, bored, lazy, unhealthy lost souls, so maybe we're not really as "rich" as we think we are.

999 - Right. ;-) I evidently picked the wrong desert. Should have said "the Sahara".