Officials of the US government arrive in Havana to discuss the migration crisis

HAVANA – A delegation from the government of the President of the United States, Joe Biden, traveled to Cuba on Wednesday to discuss the migration crisis on the island, which marks the highest-level visit to the Caribbean country since the rapprochement during the administration of the former president Barack Obama.

The Undersecretary for Consular Affairs, Rena Bitter, and the Director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, Ur Jaddou, met with the Cuban Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossio, and detailed the plans to resume the processing of immigrant visas on January 4.

The United States had anticipated this decision in September.

“This is the highest-level public visit by US officials to Cuba during the Biden administration,” a US government spokesman said.

“The visit demonstrates the administration’s commitment and work to create pathways for safe and orderly migration throughout the region,” he said.

Migration talks between the two countries resumed in April after a long hiatus following so-called “anomalous health incidents” in Havana, which Washington said had affected several US and Canadian consular officials.

The migration crisismarked by an economic recession in Cuba, has led to acute shortages of food, fuel and medicine, prompting a resumption of talks between the two long-standing political rivals.

U.S. authorities detained 220,000 Cubans at the U.S.-Mexico border from Oct. 1, 2021, to Sept. 30, 2022, according to Customs and Border Protection data, which broke records of previous migration crisesincluding departures through the Port of Mariel in 1980.

Washington wants Cuba to accept more Cubans with deportation orders arriving across the US-Mexico border, Reuters said in April.

Meanwhile, the Cubans have also increasingly taken to the sea, risking their lives in crude boats to cross the waters of the Straits of Florida.

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