We have seen this movie before.  Socialism destroys a country, and its people look for freedom.  My parents and the three of us lived it in the mid-1960s.

Check out Venezuela and the people fleeing the wonders of socialism:

Last month, 7,484 Venezuelans were encountered by Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border — more than all 14 years for which records exist.

The surprise increase has drawn comparisons to the midcentury influx of Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist rule. It’s also a harbinger of a new type of migration that has caught the Biden administration off guard: pandemic refugees.

Many of the nearly 17,306 Venezuelans who have crossed the southern border illegally since January had been living for years in other South American countries, part of an exodus of nearly 6 million Venezuelans since President Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013.

While some are government opponents fearing harassment and jailing, the vast majority are escaping long-running economic devastation marked by blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.

It's the 2021 version of the Cuban Freedom Flights that brought many to the U.S.  Between 1965 and 1975, two planes left Havana daily for Miami.  They generally brought families who quickly integrated into the successful Cuban economy in South Florida.

It's like watching a remake of the Cuban movie.  First, the ones connected with Batista fled.  Then came the big wave of people like my parents, who did not want their kids, the three of us, to grow up in a communist country.  As I told some college students a few years ago, my parents saw the real face of socialism and communism and did not want that for their children.

Wonder why President Trump carried Florida by big numbers?  It was the Cubans and the Venezuelans who became citizens recently.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).

Image: Leo Ramirez, AFP.

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