MIAMI, United States. — The United States Embassy in Cuba resumed this Wednesday consular services and visa processing, which had been suspended since 2017.
International media accredited to the Island reported that from early hours around 200 people gathered in the park next to the diplomatic headquarters to attend their respective appointments.
According to the agency report Associated Press (AP)“an official with lists in her hands called people to make them enter the consular building.”
“Since early this Wednesday some 200 people gathered in a park near the diplomatic headquarters to attend appointments called by US officials —by phone or by mail— or to find out how to obtain visas, something impossible for five years when for the increase in Washington’s sanctions consular activity practically stopped ”, reports the information published by the US media.
The resumption of consular services at the US Embassy in Cuba puts an end to Cuban travel to the US consular headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana, which for almost four years hosted immigrant visa interviews.
The event also occurs in the midst of a migration and humanitarian crisis unprecedented between Cuba and the United States. From October 2021 to date, almost 285,000 Cubans have entered the northern country through the border through Mexico, while close to 10,000 have tried to reach the Florida coast by sea. Most of the latter have been returned to the Island.
In November of last year, the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, Rena Bitter; the director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ur Mendoza Jaddou, and the Cuban Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, made official the reestablishment of consular services at the Embassy in Havana.
Authorities from the US and Cuba point out that the normalization of migration services between the two countries constitutes a fundamental step to put an end to the mass exodus of Cubans towards US territory.
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