I'm still struggling to think of what legitimate American interest is served by this action.
It's simple: Opening up our markets to them works both ways. They're only 90 miles away, and our culture is one of the most infectious going. While we haven't converted China to a democracy yet, our trade with them has induced them to give up on a lot of the communist policies and move towards a free market.
It's an old 'gripping hand' problem - by being so big on the embargo, we actually lose what control we could have over them. They just work around us, because the requirements to get us to 'open up' are so high they're never going to comply.
Open up the embargo and stuff, give it about 10 years for them to become dependent upon various things from us,
then we can apply pressure to be more free, humanitarian, etc...
edit: Realized as I was hitting submit that I should mention that the embargo didn't work over the course of 40 years. We shouldn't expect this process to work quickly.
How about those Cubans who fled here is their confiscated property restored to them? Reparations? Or does normalization finally make em sol forever
They're already SOL...