U.S. to explore resuming migration accords with Cuba
By:Reuters
Published: Apr 20, 2022, 12:37 CDT•1min read
PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - The United States will explore the possibility of resuming migration accords with Cuba, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Wednesday.
Mayorkas was speaking during a news conference in Panama.
U.S. and Cuban authorities are due to meet in Washington on Thursday to discuss migration concerns.
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2022-04-20/u-s-to-explore-resuming-migration-accords-with-cuba
~ ~ ~
U.S. and Cuba Hold First Migration Talks in Four Years
A record number of Cuban migrants travelled to the U.S.-Mexico border in March. What's driving the exodus?
By Colm Quinn, the newsletter writer at Foreign Policy.
U.S.-Cuba Talks Begin in Washington
U.S. and Cuban officials sit down in Washington today for the highest-level talks since U.S. President Joe Biden took office.
The talks represent a thaw of sorts: Officials had been meeting biannually to discuss migration since the 1990s. Four years ago, the meetings stopped, after the Trump administration effectively shuttered U.S. immigration operations in its Havana embassy over concerns sparked by the much-hyped ailment known as “Havana Syndrome.”
But there is urgency to go along with the thaw. March saw a record number of Cubans attempting to cross into the United States via its Mexican border, part of an overall two-decade high in border apprehensions. (Mexicans made up the majority of those processed, with Cubans the second highest. Ukrainians, a much rarer sight at the border, were the ninth-largest nationality represented in the figures, as 3,274 of them made the journey in March.)
Why has there been such an increase at the Mexican border when the United States is just 100 miles from Cuban soil? “It’s become clear to Cubans how dangerous the maritime route to the U.S. is. And if there’s a way to successfully travel via land, it’s very likely that would be preferred.” Jessica Bolter, a U.S. immigration expert at the Migration Policy Institute, told Foreign Policy. “We saw this shift to the land route really start about a decade ago, and once the shift starts then there’s a cycle where that’s the route that there’s the most information about, that’s the route that people’s friends and family have taken.”
More:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/21/cuba-migration-border/
