Rena Bitter, Undersecretary for Consular Affairs of the US Department of State, and Ur Mendoza Jaddou, director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, will visit Havana as part of a tour that also includes Georgetown (Guyana) and Miami (Florida), until next Thursday.
In the Cuban capital, according to the short statement made public this Monday by the State Department, they will meet with government officials to discuss the “full resumption” of immigrant visa services in Havana “in early 2023” and the recent resumption of interviews of the Parole for Family Reunification at the same diplomatic headquarters.
The official US note also informs that in Guyana, Bitter would express his gratitude “for his cooperation in consular services”, which include the processing of US immigrant visas for Cubans at his Embassy in Georgetown since 2018, and which have caused not a few vicissitudes to hundreds of families on the Island with the option of migrating for family reunification.
In its social networks, this Monday, the US diplomatic headquarters in Georgetown showed the officials together to the Minister of Human Services and Social Security of Guyana, Vindhya Persaud, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hugh Todd, indicating in a message that they discussed the international adoption process in The Hague and “the reduced waiting times for nonimmigrant visas in Guyana.
Both officials will arrive in Havana a little more than a week after the death of seven Cuban rafters – one more is still missing – after being rammed by a Cuban Border Guard boat
“The Hague Adoption Convention provides greater security, predictability and transparency for all those involved in international adoptions,” he added. the State Department in a tweet. “We welcome Guyana’s commitment to protect children and parents.”
From Guyana, and before Havana, Bitter will visit Miami, where, according to the same official statement, he will review the US passport facilities “and meet the staff.”
Both officials will arrive in Havana a little over a week after the death of seven Cuban rafters –one more is still missing– after being rammed by a boat belonging to the Cuban Border Guards, in Bahía Honda, Artemisa.
They also arrive at a time when the exodus has exceeded 224,000 people in just one yeara figure that far exceeds the previous great migratory waves of the Island, in 1980 and 1994, and that doesn’t stop.
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