Johana Tablada

Havana, January 20 (RHC)-- The United States is not complying with the migration agreements signed with Cuba. Thus, it contradicts itself in its rhetoric on the search for solutions to this problem, said a senior official of the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

Johana Tablada, deputy director-general for the United States at the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, speaking on the television program Mesa Redonda, recalled that these agreements comprise the 1984 and 1994 communiqués and the 1995 and 2017 joint declarations.

She explained that in the 1984 communiqué, the United States committed to issuing 20 thousand visas annually, but only about four thousand were delivered annually in recent years.

She added that Joe Biden's government has kept the more than 240 measures applied during Donald Trump's administration to reinforce the blockade against Cuba.

"This attitude becomes even more inhumane because it has been maintained at a time when Cuba has been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, which redoubled the difficulties of the island's population," Tablada pointed out.

Such a course of action demonstrates "the incoherence and the gap" existing between the discourse of Washington's highest officials and reality because these unilateral and coercive measures contradict what has been proposed by the authorities of that country to help solve the migratory problems on its southern border.

Tablada pointed out that the White House has reiterated the need to combat the causes that lead thousands of people from Central American nations and other regions to migrate to the United States in search of better opportunities.

However, she stressed, the U.S. policy towards Cuba goes in the opposite direction by hindering by all possible means the development and welfare of the Cuban population.

Tablada recalled that the last round on migration issues between Cuba and the United States took place in 2018. The island's authorities have insisted on the need for bilateral dialogue on an extraordinarily sensitive issue, as it affects people's lives.

In this regard, she said that proof of the need to resume these communication channels is that during the two years that the migration agreements worked adequately, there was a notable improvement in migration flows and a decrease in illegal travel to the northern country.