The Government of Cuba confirmed on Tuesday the holding of a round of talks on migration with U.S. officials next Thursday, which would be the first high-level meeting between the two governments of the current Joe Biden administration.
The meeting will take place in Washington, as explained on Twitter by the Cuban Foreign Ministry, which added that its delegation “will be chaired by Carlos Fernández de Cossío, deputy minister of foreign affairs.”
The announcement came six days after the U.S. Immigration and Customs Control (ICE) reported that the Cuban government has not accepted the repatriation of Cubans for months.
According to ICE, Cuba has not accepted any deportation of Cubans since last October by commercial or charter flights from United States territory. During this time, only 20 Cubans have voluntarily returned to the island from the United States.
The departure of Cubans, mainly to the United States, has increased markedly in recent months, something that experts link first of all to the serious economic crisis that the island is going through.
According to data from US immigration authorities, between October and February some 47,331 Cuban migrants entered the United States, after a record number of 16,657 reached the border in February alone.
Havana, which advocates orderly, legal and controlled migration, accuses Washington of encouraging irregular flows to the United States and of breaching bilateral agreements on migration.
The Cuban Government also attributes the increase in migration to the entry into force of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows Cubans to apply for permanent residence in the United States a year and one day to stay in that country.
EXILE REJECTED NEGOTIATIONS
The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, which brings together several opposition organizations from inside and outside the island, expressed its rejection on Tuesday of the beginning of talks about the migration crisis between the United States Government and the “communist tyranny.”
The assembly recalled that “the Castro regime is a regime that violates human rights that has committed and is committing crimes against humanity” and therefore “these negotiations send a message of weakness and not of support to the Cuban people, at a time when the struggle for freedom is progressively increasing in the country.”
The group of opposition organizations recalled that after the protests in Cuba on July 11, 2021, and the series of mass trials and convictions of protesters that they have provoked, the exchange between officials from both countries “constitutes a real gift to a dictatorship that must be punished for its oppression of the Cuban people.”
The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance also pointed out that the increase in the arrival of Cubans to the United States “is not surprising,” since it is the result of a “migratory pressure that the regime has exerted against the American Government in recent months” as an “escape valve” in the face of the “rebelliousness of the Cuban people.”
“Migration to the United States, particularly under Democratic administrations, has been used so many times by the Castro dictatorship as a political weapon that the maneuver is sadly predictable,” the group said in a statement.
He also recalled that the Cuban Government has expressed its full support for the Russian aggression against Ukraine.
(with information from EFE)
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