Renewed hopes but more delays for Cubans seeking US visas & More News Here

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba (AP) — Like many Cubans earlier than him, Roberto De la Yglesia left most of his household behind when he made his technique to the United States with solely his son in 2015, hoping that he might quickly carry his spouse and daughters to affix him.

Years later, the mechanical engineer in New Jersey and his household again in Cienfuegos, Cuba, are nonetheless ready — with a combination of renewed hope and skepticism — now that the Biden administration has stated it would reactivate the long-stalled Family Reunification Program, which lets Cubans legally within the U.S. carry shut family.

“My life is on pause,” stated his spouse, Danmara Triana, sitting on the couch of her home in Cienfuegos whereas surrounded by growing old images of the couple’s life collectively. A couple of toes away, her 21-year-old daughter Claudia was awaiting the return from college of 7-year-old Alice.

“My day to day life hangs on this, — to see my son, to see my husband,” Triana stated. The 48-year-old accountant stated she repeatedly checks the web site of the U.S. Embassy in Havana for information.

“I get up in the morning and look at the telephone. Will I have an interview (for a visa) or won’t I have an interview?”

The Biden administration says that roughly 20,000 purposes for household reunification visas have constructed up since 2017. That’s when President Donald Trump successfully shut down this system by withdrawing diplomatic personnel from Cuba in response to a spate of mysterious diseases amongst diplomats that many suspected had been the results of some form of directed wave assault.

But many related incidents occurred elsewhere — even in Washington — and the CIA has now decided they had been unlikely to be the results of assaults by Russia or different international adversaries.

While the administration stated in April it might start resuming this system, it has not but provided a timeline for ramping up the U.S. diplomatic presence in Cuba.

So Triana and De la Yglesia wait.

U.S. officers informed the couple in 2017, shortly earlier than diplomats had been withdrawn, that they certified for this system and in 2020 they believed that they had completed all of the paperwork and paid all of the charges.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, including to problems.

“I feel stranded. I’m not based anywhere,” stated Claudia, who stated she had dropped out of medical college, feeling “horribly unmotivated.”

The withdrawal of diplomats was solely considered one of many steps by the Trump administration to isolate Cuba and backtrack from a dramatic opening to the island below President Barack Obama.

Trump enacted more than 200 measures, starting from a ban on cruise ships to limits on cash despatched from the U.S. to restrictions on U.S, guests.

Biden introduced he would undo some — but removed from all — of the Trump-era restrictions.

With consular operations idled in Havana, U.S. officers informed Cubans to hunt visas on the operations in Guyana, throughout the Caribbean on the South American mainland — a pricey and impractical possibility for most.

So with Cuba’s financial system in dire form, rising numbers have tried to succeed in the U.S. illegally, attending to South America or Mexico and making their perilous technique to the U.S. border, including to document wave of immigration.

U.S. Customs and Border Patrol says it detained Cubans 79,800 instances on the U.S. border within the six months from October 2021 by way of March 2022 — more than double the determine for the total 12 months ending in September 2021 and 5 instances the determine for the yr earlier than that.

Next door to Triana’s home, 61-year-old Natacha González lives along with her two grandchildren. Her daughter, like De la Yglesia, now lives within the U.S. and commenced the reunification course of in 2017.

“I can speak for all the fathers and mothers who are in this country sactificing so that there is can be a correct (legal) migration of our families,” stated González’s daughter, Yanelis León, in a video name from Florida.

“I feel like I have no oxygen. … I’ve spent years at this and it’s not right that we are still waiting,” she added. “I am not going to involve my children in a migration across borders where I am going to lose them. I want to do things right.”

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Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP

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