Exported to Venezuela, miserable Cuban doctors clamor to get into U.S.

[Zorro]

Worsening conditions in Venezuela are causing increasing numbers of Cuban medical personnel working there to immigrate to the United States under a special program that expedites their applications, according to Colombian officials who help process many of the refugees.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in Washington said the number of Cuban doctors, nurses, optometrists and medical technicians applying for U.S. visas under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program is running as much as 50% ahead of last year's pace, which was nearly double that of the year before.

At the current rate, more than 1,500 Cuban healthcare workers will be admitted to the United States this year.

For geographical reasons, neighboring Colombia is a favored trampoline for Cubans fleeing Venezuela, whose leftist government has struggled to rein in runaway inflation, shortages of goods and services and rising social unrest.

http://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-venezuela-cuba-doctors-20140911-story.html

[Fred Sanders]

1. Why are they miserable? Who says wanting to emigrate to America means your former life was

miserable? Did the author say they were miserable or just looking for a better opportunity, like most doctors do?

Do not see the connection.....though bashing Venezuela from any angle is a good gig for a writer these days, even with the miserable pay.

[Zorro]

2. Try reading the article before posting

It would answer your question.

[Fred Sanders]

3. Since your title and your excerpt from the article bear no resemblance, no thanks.

[Zorro]

4. You're welcome to stay ignorant then

[Marksman_91]

6. I'm actually wondering if you've ever stepped foot in Cuba and experienced how citizens live there

Just saying, there's a reason why you see more people fleeing to the US instead of people fleeing to Cuba, which are like, what, zero?

[Fred Sanders]

8. Cuba does have free medical care, free education, all the doctors are trained for nada, and much

better beaches, so I surrender to your logic, it is not like America.....

[Bacchus4.0]

9. $20/month and your how you live your life is at the discretion of the state n/t

[Fred Sanders]

10. Neither is true, but I see inconvienent truths again being ignored because of comfortable lies.

[Bacchus4.0]

11. Well the doctors are leaving for the US or other countries via Colombia

so obviously they aren't happy with indentured servitude. And from the island, the rafts flow only one way.

[Marksman_91]

12. You still didn't answer the point I was trying to make

There's a reason why people try to flee Cuba and not the other way around, DESPITE all those services that I'm not denying they exist. How about you take a trip there someday, live like a Cuban citizen and all that. Don't tell em you're a tourist, especially an American one, or else they'll treat you like a king. The same can't be said for the citizens, unfortunately.

[MADem]

5. They didn't pay them well to start--now with inflation they can barely

survive. Raul "trades" them, like slaves, for oil. It's a terrible situation for them. They have no choice. They're often sent into the hinterlands, and are heavily monitored if they are working in a city environment.

Cuba, which prides itself on a comprehensive healthcare system and has long exported doctors and nurses to friendly countries, maintains an estimated 10,000 healthcare providers in Venezuela. The medical outreach program is intended as partial payment for 100,000 barrels of oil that President Nicolas Maduro's government ships to the Castro administration each day.

Nelia, a 29-year-old general practitioner from Santiago de Cuba, arrived in Bogota last month after what she said was a nightmarish year working in Venezuela's Barrio Adentro program in the city of Valencia. She declined to disclose her last name for fear of reprisal back home...She described the workload as "crushing." Instead of the 15 to 18 procedures a day she performed in Cuba, she did as many as 90 in Venezuela, she said. Crime is rampant, the pay is an abysmal $20 per month and Cubans are caught in the middle of Venezuela's civil unrest, which pits followers of the late President Hugo Chavez — whose handpicked successor is Maduro — against more conservative, market-oriented forces.

"The Chavistas want us there and the opposition does not. And there are more opposition people than Chavistas," said Nelia, who was interviewed in a Colombian immigration office in Bogota.

[Bacchus4.0]

7. They are slaves n/t