Jul 12, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – Rain or shine, they are out there before first light. Cubans. In ones and twos and threes. Walking abreast. Waiting at an unmarked bus stop. Cubans and more Cubans. The number of them that is around in Guyana, the government is not saying. Maybe, they don’t matter now. Perhaps, they will, as it gets closer to 2030, and their numbers swell. The PPP has never let a vote go wasted. Who cares about illegals and eligibility? There are solutions for those situations. Remember 2025.

I pass a batch of people and know that they are Cubans. Their reactions to Roberto Delgado, Tito Puente, or Carmen Miranda playing on the set give them away. Brazil, Harlem, or other roots, just play. It’s the life of a people unrooted by hardship and hurled by the winds of desperation to find a way out of their trials. Guyana is the place to be. The airport may be the easiest barrier to scale. Thereafter the language, the culture, the opportunities can be formidable, each in its own turn. For a migrant hungering for any opening, opportunity is all that he or she seeks. The price will always be right. No matter how much tricked. How often cheated. Illegals have no standing. Employers in Guyana and America, usually all over, know when to twist the knife. How long to hang a worker on the masthead of his hunger. His willingness to do almost anything to get a little something.