I will admit I got a quite upset seeing your initial comment due to my own personal experience, and I apologize for coming across so hostile.

But I will maintain that, while your concerns are not unjustified, should you be deported, you will be at worst an annoying car ride/train journey away from seeing your friends again. As well as those places and things you have grown attached to over the years you've been an immigrant, and even your work, as due to the Schengen zone, you could even still do the same job and commute between the countries. And at worst, should you be totally banned from entering for whatever reason, your friends can still take that short ride over and see you.

For many deported people, like myself, especially those sent back to the global south, we are left economically crippled and have to start over with almost nothing, knowing that we will likely NEVER return to the life, people, and everything else we were made to leave behind.

Even thinking about it today, years later, makes me so irrationally upset and depressed, knowing I'll likely never return and see my friends again, due to both the sheer distance, and the sheer economic unlikelihood of such a thing. I guess seeing these kinds of "first world" worries makes me feel a rage at the sheer injustice that I am subjected to, just because of where I happened to be born.

Would be the greatest, sweetest irony that a brain drain here could turn Cuba into the greatest socialist country in the world, a Mecca for folks tired of the capitalist soul-suck.

Cuba has honestly been near the top of my list for countries I might move to for a while now.