New emigration measures take effect on the 14th of January of this year. Passports can be requested at Identity Card and Population Registration Offices, of Immigration and Immigration Matters; also from the Ministry of the Interior of the provinces of Artemisa, Mayabeque, and the municipality of the Isle of Youth. There are 195 office in the entire country.
Now when you have to go to change or get the identity card, you have to get into a line of a thousand hells, they complicate everything, never doing anything so that “the lower ones feel attended” — as someone from the capital municipality of Plaza noted.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security carries out, together with the institutions of the State central administration, the process of defining which citizens are subject to the regulations established in the Decree 306/12, in which one can upgrade passports without the holder being present.
Minors under 18 years of age and disabled will be able to upgrade passports without a fee, in accordance with Resolution 43 of the Ministry of the Interior. The parents and legal representatives also have to show the identity card of the minor, and an authorization formalized before a notary public.
If one or both parents, or the legal representatives are outside of the country the formalized authorization is presented before a corresponding consular officer; if one of the parents has passed away, the death certificate must be shown, as must the judicial resolution when one of them does not have parental authority or it has been suspended.
The increase in requests for passports for the desire to flee the country, where no one can adequately prosper, is remarkable. While this measure constitutes an opening, it is not for all. Cubans that belong to illegal groups or from the opposition continue waiting to be able to emigrate and admitting the obstacles imposed by the offices that provide these services.
“I don’t want to stay, I want to travel where I desire and return to my homeland, for people that want the same as me, I don’t see anything in writing, nothing more than negative”, expressed a worker in the tourist sector.
Translated by: BW
January 9 2013
