Photo: HERIKA MARTINEZ / AFP / Getty Images
The arrival of Cuban immigrants has increased in recent months and for the first time, an official high-level conversation will take place between officials of the Cuban government and the Biden Administration to deal with the immigration issue.
More of 46,000 arrived at the US-Mexico border between October and February. The Coast Guard has also reported an increase in Cubans trying to reach US shores
But the Cuban authorities have refused to accept the deportations of its citizens from the United States, according to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service.
“We interact regularly with Cuban officials on issues of importance to the United States government, such as human rights and migration”, said a State Department spokesman. “We have seen a significant increase in irregular Cuban immigrants to the United States, both by land and sea. Cubans currently occupy the third largest group arriving at the southwestern border of the United States.”
The current exodus, which has rapidly exceeded the figures recorded during the rafters’ crisis in 1966, when you 36, people tried to reach the US coast in a few weeks, grew rapidly with the removal of visa requirements for Cubans by the government of Nicaragua, a close ally of Cuba, last November.
The crisis adds to already tense relations between the United States and Cuba and to the administration’s problems in addressing unprecedented levels of immigrants at the southern border.
Cuban officials have said that the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, what p allows Cubans to quickly apply for permanent residence if they are legally admitted and have lived in the United States for a year and a day, provides “incentives” for Cubans to leave the island. They also said that the United States is not complying with an agreement to broadcast 20,000 Immigration visas to Cubans annually.
The Embassy of the United States in Havana said it would begin processing some immigration visas in May after a pause of more than four years as a result of the closure of consular services in 2017.
But it is likely that the announcement will not reduce much more than 100,000 immigration visas still pending, impacting Cuban families trying to reunite with relatives in the United States , under migratory agreements between both countries for family reunification.
Thursday’s meeting in Washington will be the highest-level exchange between the two countries since President Joe Biden took office.
From Panama City, where he was visiting, the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS, in English) of the United States, Alejandro Mayorkas, confirmed these conversations on Wednesday, after that Cuba would announce them on Tuesday.
Without offering great details, Mayortas recalled in a press conference that for years the US and Cuba had migratory agreements, that ended up being “discontinued”.
In this new dialogue, both countries will “explore” the possibility of reactivating these agreements.
It may interest you:
– The tragic “silent exodus” of Cuban rafters is on the rise, as are the deaths of those fleeing Cuba“It is a silent Mariel”: the thousands of Cubans using Nicaragua as a route to reach the United States
– Biden proposes a migration pact on the agenda of the Summit of the Americas