When your country becomes a totalitarian regime, you often preserve your identity through exile. This is largely because all institutions have been shattered in your country and there is virtually no possibility of democratic resistance to tyranny. Every institution is politicized in a communist regime.

It’s shocking to think about this matter of exile in a historic context – all through this ages, exile on a vast scale is relatively rare – but under communism it’s a perfectly accepted reality. Of 13 million Cubans worldwide, 2 million are in exile. And this, under conditions of extreme totalitarian control. If emigration from Cuba were open, no one knows how high the numbers would be.

Yesterday the U.S. announced that it would get rid of all illegal immigrants. Cuban-Americans are looking at that closely, and suspect the U.S. might have in mind the business of withdrawing its limited asylum to Cubans escaping tyranny on shark-infested seas, too. There is a very intelligent and serious discussion going on about this at Babalu among Cuban Americans in this post here.