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4 March, 2022 US visa resumption announcement in Cuba

Havana, Cuba.- Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez today valued the announcement of the resumption of the U.S. embassy visa procedures in Cuba as a step in the right direction.

In his message the diplomat said that this is a correct action in the bilateral relationship although the date of the reopening of the limited migratory services at the headquarters has not been specified.

Those procedures were closed in 2017 as the first act of the Donald Trump administration’s policy of hostility, Rodriguez added.

He recalled that that unilateral decision had as a pretext unfounded accusations that U.S. diplomats had been attacked in Cuba.

Police, health and scientific authorities in Washington and Havana have agreed that there is no evidence of an attack against U.S. diplomats in Cuba.

The Cuban foreign minister added in his message on Twitter that the consequences of the closure of consular services have been very harmful for Cuban families and relations between Cuba and the United States in multiple spheres.

In the opinion of experts this measure was a political operation that appealed to force to artificially reverse the progress in relations between the two countries, which by 2017 had signed 22 agreements, in areas of common interest.

The closure of the U.S. embassy, the tightening of the blockade with more than 200 measures in recent years and Washington’s failure to comply with migration agreements stimulate irregular migration from the island, to the point of putting lives at risk.

Timothy Zúñiga-Brown, chargé d’affaires at the U.S. embassy in Cuba, announced on Thursday that the diplomatic headquarters is preparing to issue visas to emigrants in a limited and gradual manner.