US, Cuba To Hold Second Round Of Talks As Immigration Crisis Continues In America

As a record number of Cubans are taken into custody for attempting to cross the U.S. border, the United States and Cuba on Monday agreed to continue talks regarding the migration crisis as they try to mitigate the increasing migrants entering the country.

The new set of talks happening between Cuba and the U.S. is the second set to happen this year, after talks between the countries resumed in April under the Biden administration, with the restart of the “full immigrant visa processing” program on Jan. 4, according to Reuters.

These talks are happening as more and more Cubans arrive at the U.S. border, with a reported 28,848 Cubans being stopped by U.S. authorities in October 2022 alone. The mass migration exodus has reportedly been caused by economic and infrastructure problems happening in the country this year, VOA News reported.

Despite the two countries’ differences in ideology, both the Cuban government and the U.S. agreed to maintain a dialogue about the migration crisis and the record number of Cubans attempting to enter the country, with the State Department saying that they continue to be committed “to pursuing constructive discussions” regarding the crisis.

“These talks are routine and represent a continuation of our nearly 30-year engagement with Cuba on migration matters as neighboring states and are limited to the topic of migration,” a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said.

Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said that some of the talks will revolve around the United States’ current policies regarding Cuban migrants, whose conditions are more favorable and more likely to be accepted than migrants of other nationalities.

Of the 220,000 Cubans that came to the United States in 2022 so far, most were allowed into the country so that they could pursue cases that would allow them to immigrate into the United States.

Among the policies that Cuba has agreed with so far is the acceptance of deportation flights of Cubans caught at the U.S. border who failed an initial test asking for asylum, which will resume on an occasional basis once U.S. immigration authorities have enough people to fill up a plane, another Reuters report said.