Cuban migrants will have the ability to become legal citizens in Uruguay and obtain documentation
EFE/14ymedio, Montevideo, 17 May 2024 — The Residency by Rootedness program created by the Government of Uruguay will regularize the situation of some 20,000 migrants – the majority of whom were born in Cuba – who will be able to obtain residency.
This was explained this Thursday during a press conference by Uruguay’s Foreign Minister, Omar Paganini, who indicated that this mechanism will allow these people to abandon an irregular situation and have the possibility of becoming legal citizens and obtaining documentation.
“This allows us to resolve the issue of family reunification of these people, which is one of the very important issues from the point of view of their rights. So we believe that it is very good news for an important group in our country, that was waiting for procedures in the Refugee Commission, but that they were procedures that could not be favorable to the extent that they do not meet the conditions of political refuge,” he noted.
“This allows us to resolve the issue of family reunification of these people, which is one of the very important issues from the point of view of their rights
Paganini explained that this will solve the situation of some 20,000 people who need a visa to enter Uruguay and who did so without having one under the category of refugees.
“This above all has to do with people who request refuge because they do not have a visa and are not eligible for refuge. So basically we are talking about people of Cuban origin or from other countries for which a visa is required,” he said.
And he added: “They enter as refugees but they are not refugees and that is where this regulatory limbo is generated, which is what allows us to resolve the decree,” said the minister, who added that the majority of these are Cubans.
On the other hand, he explained that in order to process residency through rootedness, people must be working, housed or must have family in Uruguay.
Finally, the head of the portfolio stressed that this is a temporary solution for all the people who have already started the process, and that how the process continues and the steps to follow will then be evaluated.
“For now it is not a definitive solution, therefore it is not ‘come on, this works automatically’,” Paganini concluded.
Last April it emerged in the Uruguayan press that more than 7,000 Cubans who requested refuge in the country in 2023 remained “in limbo” because the system to address them is “suffocated,” according to the newspaper El Observador. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs then said that the country ended that year with 24,193 accumulated applications.
“For now it is not a definitive solution, therefore it is not ‘come on, this works automatically’
The same newspaper reiterated that Uruguay had no intention “of deporting undocumented immigrants, much less accumulating irregular inhabitants,” with the consequent problems that would arise from this, so Montevideo was rushing to find a solution.
A year earlier, Alberto Gianotti, from the Migrant Support Network, had warned that between 9,000 and 10,000 Cuban nationals had to apply for a visa to maintain their legal status in the South American country.
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Since the president of the United States, Barack Obama, ended the wet foot/dry foot policy in that country in 2017, Cubans have found an alternative route in Uruguay, which begins in Guyana, the only South American country that does not require a visa. From there they make a journey through Brazil where they have to resort to coyotes until they reach Uruguay, where they ask for refuge.
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