I think what's missing from your analysis is that they tend to be socially conservative. As in, they don't like the gays and the atheists.

I’ve worked with emigrées (?sp) from both Cuba and Russia and it never ceases to both anger and baffle me that they ran away from shitty, awful dictators and then turn around and want the same thing here in the US.

smells to me like it's probably related to the psychology behind prolonged abusive relationships, or people continually getting into abusive relationships.

There’s the religious factor, as many of them are catholic and of course the republicans call the Dems “godless”

As if the Republican evangelicals actually had anything to do with christianism.

It just surprises me that this messaging is so effective when Trump would love nothing more than to send every brown person living in Florida straight to Cuba, American citizen or otherwise. It's a very strange sort of political climate where people who fear being deported back to Cuba are voting for the party promising mass deportations because... they don't like abortion? I can't quite wrap my head around it.

You understand that Castro went after than more than just slave owners right? It's super disingenuous to pretend that most of the 1.5 million people who have fled Cuba were slave owners.

That's a nice part of accepting refugees from a state like Cuba. You pretty much get to selectively import the right-wing elements of their population.

Similar effect happens with Venezuelans. The ones who can afford to uproot their lives are also more likely to align ideologically with US politics.

I used to work with a lot of Cubans. My favorites were the old ones. They would tell me stories about living in Cuba under Castro back in the day. One thing that I always found interesting is how they said they were happier. It might just be nostalgia but I've heard from older people from Soviet areas too.

Life was slower and as long as you did your job certain things were guaranteed to you. In a capitalist system you have infinitely more purchasing power but they would make the analogy of addiction. In the US you are addicted to money so you need to work a lot more to pay the bills.

Whereas in Cuba you spend a lot more time idle and just living life, even if you're not able to purchase common items we consider essential. (Some days you go to store and there's no shoes, next day there's no bread, etc)

My least favorite were the 2nd generation ones. Like Marco Rubio. They don't understand the struggle but feel intensely like they do. Very strong opinions with very little nuance. I've met my fair share.

Yeah, it seems many didn't have an issue with the evil shit just that they weren't on the top and/or were poor

It's a combination of things -- Trump's agressive, chauvinistic persona maps well onto Latin concepts of machismo, and there's also a surprising strain of pull-the-ladder-up-behind-you thinking amongst established Hispanic families aimed at the current wave of migrants.

If you break it down on a policy by policy basis (is this policy leftist?) like dems are certainly not leftist. People conflate being "left of republicans" with being "leftist" even though a lot of their positions are quite centrist.

It's not like Bautista wasn't a dictator, so the question becomes why didn't they flee the dictator that allowed you to have slaves instead of the one that wanted every Cuban to have a house and be able to read.