The two senior US officials who were in Cuba these last two days They not only spoke with their counterparts on the Island about migration. According to a statement made public on Wednesday by the Embassy of the United States in CubaRena Bitter, Undersecretary for Consular Affairs of the Department of State, expressed to the Cuban officials with whom she met her “concern” about the human rights situation and asked the government to “unconditionally release” all political prisoners.
Both Bitter and Ur Mendoza Jaddou, director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, visited Havana as the end of a working tour that also included Guyana and Miami.
In their meetings on the island, the officials discussed issues such as the complete resumption of immigrant visa procedures at the Embassy in Havana, as of next January 4, or diversity visas. In addition, they advanced the resumption of the processing of K visas for fiancés in the same diplomatic headquarters.
Both met on Wednesday with the Cuban Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, reported in a statement from the Foreign Ministrywhich does not allude to the issue of human rights, as the United States does.
In addition, they advanced the resumption of the processing of K visas for fiancés in the same diplomatic headquarters
On the contrary, the document alludes to the suspension five years ago, by the previous US Administration, of the consular services “under a pretext discarded by scientists and official reports”, that is, the so-called “Havana Syndrome”, the health incidents suffered by US and Canadian diplomats and that Cuba denies.
Foreign Affairs also reproaches the northern neighbor for having only granted Cubans around 4,000 annual visas in recent years, when “in the 1984 migration agreements, the United States undertook to grant at least 20,000 annual visas.”
The lament continues: “In the last five years, Cubans have been forced to go to third countries for all their procedures, which increases costs and without certainty of approval, and there are those who bet on irregular migration that puts lives in danger. “, referring to Guyana.
In Georgetown on Monday, the US diplomatic headquarters published a photo of Bitter ya Mendoza Jaddou together with 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.
The exodus from the Island 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 grows day by day.
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