Elimination of remittances, a blow from Trump to the Cuban family

A country must live on what it produces, not on remittances, under this message promoted on social networks, Washington seeks to sell the idea of eliminating remittances to Cuba. In this way, the Trump administration announced on October 23 new measures that would affect the sending of money to the Island.

This measure cannot be seen in isolation from the unprecedented escalation, during this year, of the tightening of the economic, financial and commercial blockade that the United States has exercised against Cuba for almost six decades; thus pretending that Cubans blame their government for the deprivations derived from it.

Although the measure is unpopular with a significant number of Cuban Americans, the White House intends to justify its dirty policies of economic suffocation by promoting the idea of not contributing to the development of the Cuban state .

It should be noted then that remittances are voluntary unilateral transactions that respond to family ties between countries, not donations or official aid . In this sense, Cuban families benefiting from remittances will have to drastically reduce their ability to consume goods and services, save or invest their money.

Cuban Americans are the only group of immigrants to which the US government and a powerful sector of their own nationals, have limited the ability to help their families.

Successive US governments have restricted the right of every migrant to help their families, with the exception of Barack Obama, who, as a consequence of his policy of expanding the private sector in Cuba, favored the
arrival of money to the island population.

Although it is difficult to determine the volume of remittances sent, due to the multiplicity of channels used, the United States Department of State estimated that, between 2012 and 2016, this figure was between 1.4 and 2 billion dollars annually.

Taking the higher figure as a reference, Cuba is not among the first countries to receive remittances, however the northern nation has not applied any restrictive measure in this regard against countries such as Mexico, China,
India, the Philippines or Vietnam, which lead the statistics .

It could be affirmed then that the obsession of the current occupant of the White House on this issue can only be understood in the context of his pact with the extreme right of Cuban origin, to win them as followers in the
presidential elections on November 3.