Havana, March 24 (ACN) Statement by Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, Director General of Consular Affairs and Cubans Abroad:
In recent weeks, a group of our citizens are experiencing difficulties traveling to countries in our immediate region as some of them require new visas to visit or transit. It is a complex situation, which the Cuban government is dealing with with the utmost severity, and which has several causes.
Since 2017, the United States government has unilaterally and unjustly violated the commitment signed in 1994 to ensure the legal immigration of at least 20,000 Cubans per year to that country. Since it has stopped processing immigration procedures at its embassy in Cuba since October 2017, the few thousands that the US authorities have admitted every year since then are forced to travel to Guyana to carry out such procedures without any guarantees and with the resulting costs and burdens that this means for any potential migrant.
As is well known, during these years the United States government has maintained in full force and significantly strengthened the economic blockade aimed at disrupting our economy, lowering the standard of living of Cubans, causing bottlenecks and affecting the level of consumption and services, on which the population depends. It is a policy that has been tightened in the most critical moments of the confrontation with COVID 19; also at the same time as the negative effects of the pandemic on the global economy.
In addition, since the 1960s, the United States’ migration policy towards Cuba has had the legal support of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which almost automatically gives every Cuban arriving in that country the opportunity to adjust their immigration status after one year of arrival and become a permanent one to become a resident.
This is an exclusive privilege for Cubans, which naturally encourages the belief in many that as Cuban citizens they have the right to immigrate to the United States and be accepted in that country, regardless of the route and form they use.
Accompanying this legislation is a highly biased and demagogic policy that has for decades assumed that any Cuban entering US territory does so because of political persecution or a “plausible fear” of returning to their country of origin; when statistics clearly show that the number of Cuban travelers visiting Cuba from US territory is steadily growing every year.
All of these are factors that stimulate migration and, in particular, irregular migration with final destination on the territory of the United States when the legal channels are closed, as has been the case since 2017, as has happened in the past decades or in the past.
These realities explain in large part the high level of legal and irregular migration flows of Cubans through countries in the region, particularly Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, which places a strain on these nations and their governments and on their relationship with Cuba United States United States, already suffering from the high migration potential of their respective populations.
They also explain the United States government’s efforts and pressure to get transit countries to take action against Cuban emigrants to require visas when they have not done so in the past, including transit visas, which are required even for Cubans intended with permanent residence in other countries.
In addition, Washington is working insidiously to obstruct the processing of new visas at embassies accredited in Havana, with the aim of increasing the discomfort of the Cubans concerned. These are efforts that contrast with the traditional and veiled encouragement for the emigrant to use these areas to irregularly enter the country and the southern border of the United States, where entry into that country is facilitated.
It is cynical to force Cubans to travel to Guyana to process their immigrant visas while ensuring that those wishing to reach Georgetown are required to have a thirdcountry transit visa; while the operations of the US Consulate in Havana remain suspended or very limited.
The scenario that the Cuban emigrant faces today is the historic and lasting stimulus to migrate to the United States, the refusal of that country to process in Cuba the 20,000 annual visas that it has committed to in bilateral agreements, the burden of an economic blockade that is affecting their standard of living and giving them the illusion of prospects for prosperity in the United States, plus the pressure on governments in the region to require visas from Cubans wishing to take advantage of the permanent incentive to emigrate United States.
It is a reality that also affects those Cubans who aim to travel and make temporary visits to countries in the region without the aim of emigration.
In many cases, the visa applicant is forced to purchase an airline ticket as a condition of applying for the transit visa, with no guarantee that the visa will be issued, nor the ability to receive a refund if the visa application is rejected. . .
The Cuban government has raised these issues directly and through diplomatic channels with the United States government. She has expressed that her current behavior towards Cubans who want to emigrate is abusive, contrary to the signed bilateral agreements, harmful to the countries of the region and encourages illegal, irregular and unsafe migration by both land and sea. He recalled that the current US President’s obligation to his own electorate is to correct the noncompliance with migration agreements initiated by his predecessor, which is still ongoing and having an impact on emigrants and their families.
At the same time, it is in communication with the governments of the region, whose sovereign migration regulations it respects, but which it wishes to apply without discrimination against Cubans, with wellanticipated announcements, reasonable implementation deadlines and the possibility of reducing the burden on those who have already made expenditures and commitments are because they could travel without a visa requirement.
It is absolutely unfair to ask the Cuban applicant to emigrate the behavior changes of the United States government and to force them to pay additional costs and in the worst case lose significant sums of money already promised. It is also abusive to get him to cover travel expenses and procedures without travel guarantees, especially when it is a discriminatory requirement against Cubans.
The most obvious of the scenarios described above is that it does not deviate one iota from the United States’ traditional destabilizing policy towards Cuba and the desire to use the population hostage to a hegemonic and hostile ambition against Cuba and against our government. Nor does it move away from the historical disdain for the countries of our region, for its pressure against Cuba and which, in an election year, intends to face the migratory challenge on its southern border and whose immigrants it subjects to customary practices to the point of a discriminatory, racist, degrading and abusive treatment.