More Cubans Are Visiting the USA
Wilfredo Cancio Isla (Café Fuerte)
HAVANA TIMES — Some 29,700 visas for family visits, educational, cultural or business-related trips have been issued to Cubans this year. The figure is close to setting a record in the issuing of temporary permits for travel to the United States this fiscal year.
According to statistics made available to CafeFuerte by the US Interests Section (USINT) in Havana, the visas for family visits (B1 and B2) issued between October of 2013 and this past June 30th have experienced a 25% increase in comparison to the same period last year. The majority of these are 5-year, multiple-entry visas, a type of travel visa that USINT began to issue to Cubans in August of 2013.
Everything indicates that, by the end of the last quarter of 2014 (September 30), the issuing of visas to Cuban visitors to the US will have reached a record figure.
Complying with the Migratory Accords
The USINT Consular Section also stamped more than 17,000 immigrant visas for Cuban citizens this year, in compliance with the migratory accords reached by Havana and Washington in 1994 and 1995. At this pace, the United States will easily meet its commitment of issuing 20,000 immigrant visas a year, as agreed by the two parties following the balseros (“raft-people”) crisis twenty years ago.
Washington has indeed met its commitment, issuing at least 20,000 visas to Cuban immigrants every year, in addition to the visas issued to the winners of the lottery under the US State Department’s Diversity Program, which issued 1,480 such visas to Cuban applicants following its latest draw (DV-2015). Cuba and Venezuela (1,556) where the two Latin American countries that secured the largest number of US residencies through the lottery draw this past May.
The number of visas issued to Cubans under the two categories – visitors and immigrants – adds up to 46,700 this year, an unprecedented increase in consular activity in Havana. During 2013, USINT issued 56,981 travel documents. Of these, 32,254 were visitor visas and 24,727 were immigrant visas.
The more flexible travel regulations and increase in the issuing of visitor visas to Cubans is the ostensible result of the policies that have been implemented by the Obama administration since 2009. The USINT headquarters in Havana has had to expand its facilities to be able to receive and process the avalanche of requests that followed the implementation of Cuba’s migratory reforms, which, last year, eliminated the previously required travel permit and other restrictions that applied to Cuban nationals wishing to travel abroad.
Fleeing the Island
The new migratory regulations applied under Raul Castro’s government allow travelers to remain abroad for 24 months without losing any of their rights as Cuban citizens, something which allows those who visit the United States to avail themselves of the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) and secure legal residency in the country before returning to the island.
Not even these new options for legal immigration, however, have managed to stop Cubans seeking to illegally flee the island and arrive in the United States by sea or by crossing the Mexican or Canadian borders.
As of August this year, 1,835 Cubans had been intercepted in the Strait of Florida by the US Coast Guard Service and repatriated to Cuba. Over 200 managed to reach US soil and invoke the CAA “dry foot” policy this year.
More than 20,000 Cubans have entered the United States through bordering countries. A total of 14,000 through the Mexican border, according to data from the Customs and Porden Protection (CBP) Department.
NON-IMMIGRANT VISAS FOR FAMILY VISITS, ACADEMIC AND CULTURAL EXCHANGES AND BUSINESS-RELATED TRIPS (2004-2014)
2004 – 10,508
2005 – 11,632
2006 – 7,330
2007 – 10,614
2008 – 11,060
2009 – 17,690
2010 – 20,768
2011 – 16,654
2012 – 15,983
2013 – 32,254
2014 – 29,700 (October 2013-June 2014)
Source: US Interests Section
Once again, I will for the sake of the truth, express a simple view .
Consider the Natives of North America; They cared for and were the rightful
owners of the land under The Great Spirit they called it. God so loved these people.
They are still living by those beliefs as Communal people. They would choose a spiritual leader or dictator identified thru miraculous events of courage and approved by God.For thousands of years they had kept the land for God or the Great spirit they called it.
Today they are “Idle no more” still holding on to there knowledge of God or The Great Spirit and with their communal system trying to save us all. They have been for centuries and still are to this day being raped and murdered daily . The authorities who are worshipping corporate greed have for centuries considered these rapes as good,sick right?
As for the ones who have left their communal homes much like the unknowing Cuban’s who make the same mistake , are left disapointed and unfulfilled .
These lost sheep face ,as is often the case, ” BY THE TIME YOU KNOW IT IS TOO LATE”. They can not get back to what was a better “SIMPLE LIFE”.
God does have his ways and ironically the natives of North America have been
thru dna analysis been linked to the Chinese who are themselves communal.
Archeological digs have also confirmed these findings.What does it mean?
Do the calculation and dont kill the messenger, this crime must be punished.
I have nothing to gain by this theory or maybey everything.
God help me I love you so.
Horses and rodrigvm both wear blinkers. rodrigvm who I imagine is a member of the species Homo Sapiens is unbelievably crass ***. He fails to comprehend that intelligent people actually seek freedom and are miserable when subjected to a dictatorship which controls their lives literally from the cradle to the grave. Cubans don’t need an “excuse” to place their lives in danger – they have reason! It appears that rodrigvm thinks that unless faced with death, intelligent people should just accept whatever controls and restrictions are imposed upon them by a dictatorship. In rodrigvm’s view having the joy of looking forward to a longer period as a senior citizen trying to survive on 200 pesos a month represents success upon the part of the Castro family regime. He lauds the life expectancy of Cubans – so how much credit does he give to Equador which includes those tortoises on the Galapagos that live to over 120? Is that point off the point? No more than rodrigvm’s about money not being the only reason for living. The Castro family regime keeps the living standards of Cubans below the poverty level as a matter of policy.
“Poverty is the worst form of oppression” Mahatma Ghandi
Who is rodrigvm to criticize those Cubans who seek freedom, freedom from oppression, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, freedom of action? They only seek a little of what he already has.
***To save rodrigvm looking up the meaning of the word crass, the dictionary says:
showing a grossly insensitive lack of intelligence
The word is derived from the Latin crassus
There are many reasons to leave the US…by the way, many do…money is not the only reason for living.
Read the article again, 24,727 higher than for most countries in Latin America……
I guess that is why the life expectancy of Cubans is higher than in most of Latin America? I am sure your neurosurgeon friend is healthy. So what if he is an MD everyone deserves a better life……
The lack of basic freedom is a very powerful motivation. It can suffocate the life out of people. You seem to be genuinely not understand how oppression can drive humans to do the unthinkable. People like you saw the “colored slave” and asked why should they run away? They had food, clothing and a roof over their head. What more do they want?” Not all prisons need to have iron bars and locked doors. By the way, it was once thought that automobiles were not necessary to live well. We thought the same about washers and dryers and then microwave ovens. Now it’s cell phones and WiFi. People like you who can enjoy these little things that make everyday life easier can also choose not to enjoy them. But to someone like my best friend in Cuba who is a neurosurgeon who takes the bus for an hour and a half from Cotorro to Calixto Garcia Hospital every day, says that a car would add years to his life. WiFi would probably help to save a patient’s life if he could make calls to the hospital from the bus ride. Your developed world arrogance reeks of self-righteousness when you talk about someone being materialistic because I see wifi as a freedom. Maybe Peru would be empty save a few if there were a PAA like the CAA. One thing is for sure, it would not be Peruvian doctors or engineers or university professors leaving the way these professionals want to leave Cuba. That is the difference.between Cuba and the rest of the world.
Most Cubans does not get visa or immigrant status, just a few get it….. it seems you know all of them……… but majority of Cubans have no hope to get a visa or immigrant status that allow them to escape castro regime…… people like you will never believe the powerful reasons Cubans have to attempt such a perilous way to escape ….. otherwise you would not be wondering why they do it.
What I said I said it clearly, I have friends who have come with a visitor visa and another with an immigrant visa, got on a plane and did not face the same dangers some Cubans place themselves in. Are Cuban being executed? Are Cuban being killed like in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala? Are Cuban children dying of hunger? There is no excuse to risk your life to get “Wifi”? How materialistic? You can do what thousands have done…..and yest the Cuban adjustment act has to be eliminated, these are not political refugees they are economic refugees. If there was a Peru Adjustment Act Peru would b empty, just the elite would remain keeping the lights on.
“There is no excuse for Cuban to place their lives in danger crossing through other countries into the US.” When you typed this ridiculous sentence, were you at home using the low-cost high-speed internet, or at a coffee shop with free WiFi, or worse, at work (shhhh) on the company computer. If so, you were exercising one of hundreds of freedoms that you enjoy without thinking about it that Cubans don’t have or have to pay an arm and a leg for. If you want a steak dinner today, do you have to pay a month’s salary at the market to buy the steaks? If you hate Obama you can stand outside your house and scream at the top of your voice what a jerk you think he is. Your neighbors may think you’re nuts but no one will call the police to arrest you for ‘disrespecting authority’. I could go on and on about shortages, blackouts, buildings that fall down, cholera epidemics, etc. You may want to rethink that first sentence.
As someone who fled Cuba with his family I, and many like me, can say there are LOTS of reason and excuses to leave Cuba. …must be embarrassing for you!
What a tragic grim failure Cuba has become. The Black Death leveled Europe, but from that devastaion came the beautiful Renassance. God willing this will be the reward for Cuba after the Castro disease is finally erased.
The more than 17,000 US immigrant visa holders, the estimated 20,000 Cubans who came through the Mexican and Canadian borders and the nearly 2000 Cubans who have attempted crossing the Florida Straits obviously did not read Havana Times. Had they been avid readers of this site, they would have read posts written by Elio Legon Delgado and comments from readers like Walter Teague espousing how wonderful life in Cuba is. They would learn from commenters like Dan, Emagicmtman and the one-of-a-kind John Goodrich, how horrible life in the US is and that life is much better in Cuba. The truth is that despite what outsiders like these Castro sycophants believe, REAL Cubans are voting with their feet. It is no secret that given the combination of low birthrate, outmigration and the increasing lifespan of elderly Cubans, that Cuba is on a demographic death spiral. By some estimates, as soon as one generation from now, around 2040, Cuban will not have enough young adults to populate a workforce sufficient to care for the elderly and the child populations. Health and education services will be inadequately funded and staffed. The military and police forces will be strained and production overall will be fatally insufficient. Even if you don’t buy into this doomsday horizon, whatever Cuba looks like in 25 years will not be good. Despite the tepid and ineffectual reforms implemented by the Castros recently, the only real solution will come when the Castros are no longer in charge and Cubans are free to CHOOSE FOR THEMSELVES what form of government they wish.
There is no excuse for Cuban to place their lives in danger crossing through other countries into the US. On the other hand, it is time to eliminate
the preferential treatment for Cubans including the Cuban adjustment act, there
is no reason to maintain it.