14ymedio, Madrid, 7 November 2022 – – Rena Bitter, Undersecretary of Consular Affairs of the U.S. State Department, and Ur Mendoza Jaddou, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, will visit Havana as part of a tour that also includes Georgetown (Guyana) and Miami (Florida), until this coming Thursday.
In the Cuban capital, according to the brief statement made public this Monday by the State Department, they will meet with government officials to discuss the “total resumption” of immigrant visa services in Havana “at the beginning of 2023” and the recent resumption of Parole for Family Reunification interviews at the same diplomatic headquarters.
The official U.S. note also reports that in Guyana, Bitter would express her gratitude “for the country’s cooperation in consular services,” which includes the processing of U.S. immigrant visas for Cubans at the Georgetown Embassy since 2018, a pressing issue for hundreds of families on the Island, who want the option of migrating by family reunification.
On its social networks, this Monday, the U.S. diplomatic headquarters in Georgetown showed the officials 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 process of international adoptions in The Hague and “the reduced waiting times for nonimmigrant visas in Guyana.”
“The Hague Adoption Agreement provides greater security, predictability and transparency for all those involved in international adoptions,” the State Department said in a tweet. “We welcome Guyana’s commitment to protect children and parents.”
From Guyana, and before Havana, Bitter will visit Miami, where, according to the same official statement, she will review the U.S. passport facilities “and meet the staff.”
Both officials will arrive in Havana a little more than a week after the death of seven Cuban balseros [rafters] — one more remains missing — after the small boat they were in was rammed by a speedboat from the Cuban Border Guards, in Bahía Honda, Artemisa.
They also arrive at a time when the exodus has exceeded 224,000 people in just one year, a figure that far exceeds the previous major migratory waves of the Island, in 1980 and 1994, and that doesn’t stop.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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