By José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez on June 29, 2022
image: portal cuba
Olga Lidia had serious doubts at first when she was asked to travel to the United States illegally via Central America. At her age, she didn’t think she was physically fit to undertake a journey that would take her through countries, jungles, rivers, and put her life in the hands of several coyotes. What she wasn’t prepared for was being separated from her daughter on the day the traffickers told her that her relatives in Miami hadn’t paid the full price agreed upon before the journey began.
Michel sold all his belongings in Camagüey to travel three times to Guyana with his wife, hoping to obtain visas to enter the United States legally. On his last attempt, he experienced perhaps the biggest surprise when his application was approved, but his wife’s was not, for reasons he could not understand.
They hugged each other at the exit of the US consulate, unsure whether to stay together or separate and each try their luck. Olegario had become accustomed in recent years to traveling regularly to Tucson, Arizona, to see his grandchildren, until flights from Cuba were abruptly suspended in 2019.
He always thought that the worst part was getting on a plane twice and enduring the turbulence. So when they explained that this time it would only be a flight to Managua and then he would continue by road, he didn’t dismiss the idea. Everything changed when the bus he was traveling on plunged down a ravine and he saw his life spinning out of control.
These three characters and their respective circumstances are fictional, but at the same time they represent the experiences of thousands of Cubans who, overnight, had to change their life plans, stop seeing their families, or were forced to make crazy decisions, for the simple reason that, starting in 2017, the US government decided not to respect the migration agreements signed with Cuba in 1994, 1995, and January of that year.
After the last of these agreements, both countries had managed to reduce the number of Cubans arriving irregularly at the US borders to zero. This could be the most cherished goal for the United States in its immigration relations with any neighboring country, but with none of them (except Cuba) has it achieved such a result to date.
In the years immediately preceding 2017, the US authorities had not only fulfilled their commitment to grant 20,000 or more immigrant visas to Cuban applicants, but had also introduced new practices, such as five-year multiple-entry visas, all of which made human movement from both sides of the border more predictable.
But the situation changed in the blink of an eye, starting with the fabrication of the alleged “sonic attacks” against US diplomatic personnel in Havana, a rather primitive justification for closing the consular services of that mission. Today we know that it was all a crude fabrication and that its promoters have received large sums of money in return.
After a year of being elected and remaining completely silent on the normalization or not of such services, the Biden administration announced on March 3 that it would “begin the limited resumption of some immigrant visa services as part of the broader expansion of the functions” of its embassy in Cuba.
This type of news in itself generates mobilization, public opinion, and expectations among many families. In the United States, it is common practice to make such announcements as trial balloons to gauge the level of support or rejection they generate among the population or in political circles.
Therefore, when on April 6 the State Department said that the resumption of immigrant visa processing would begin in May and would be only for parents of U.S. citizens, indicating that the bulk of the service would remain in Georgetown, Guyana, suspicion grew about the real purpose of the original announcement.
Even though nothing had changed in practice, the 34th round of migration talks between the two countries took place on April 21, in which the two delegations ratified the validity of the agreements on this matter and the Cuban representatives referred to the senselessness of forcing potential migrants to travel to Guyana and complete the procedures from there.
It was only on May 3 that the media outlets used by the US government for its official campaigns began to talk about the “resumption of immigration procedures” in Havana, without providing further details, thus sowing new doubts.
It is worth noting that all this information pilgrimage took place amid other US actions through third parties, supposedly to reduce the chances of Cuban travelers who left their country legally from initiating irregular trafficking to the United States.
Ultimately, on May 16, the White House affirmed its willingness to respect the total of 20,000 annual visas for Cuban emigrants, but always processing the vast majority of their applications from Guyana, not Havana. On June 9, the US embassy in the Cuban capital reported that in addition to visas for parents of US citizens, it would consider spouses and children under the age of 21.
However, the truth is that none of these categories count toward the total of 20,000 annual visas agreed upon under the migration agreements, and that consular procedures in Havana remain highly restricted, with new limits still being imposed. While in the past, medical checkups for potential migrants could be carried out in Cuban provincial hospitals, the embassy now only accepts those carried out in a single hospital in the capital. Why?
Step by step, the resumption of flights between Florida and several Cuban airports outside Havana began in mid-June, a move that is also generating more demand for consular services at the respective diplomatic missions.
There is no plausible justification for the mess created around this issue. The arguments used to generate this crisis have already been proven false, and the intention to close the legal migration channel in order to increase “social pressure” in Cuba has been evident. Nothing new under the sun.
Although not a topic commonly addressed by the media, these subtle changes also respond to enormous pressure from Cubans living in Miami and other cities, who are not represented by the traditional political clique, which in response came up with such absurd and outdated proposals as moving consular services from Guyana to the illegal Guantanamo Naval Base.
It remains to be seen whether the White House will maintain sovereignty over foreign policy toward Cuba or bow down to Republican operatives in Florida or the Union City underworld. They should have realized by now that both forms of appeasement led them to make a fool of themselves at the recent deserted summit in Los Angeles.
On another occasion, we will ask about the probable economic compromise between elected US officials and human traffickers. The latter have seen their capital grow profusely in recent years thanks to the actions of the former.
Perhaps the faint-hearted will act in time and save others like Olga Lidia, Michel, and Olegarios.
José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana, Cuba.
Source: International Policy Research Center, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English