The head of Bilateral Issues of the U.S. Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yuri Gala.
Havana, Jun 30 (RHC) Although the current U.S. government has not yet defined its policy toward Cuba, the Caribbean nation hopes that as part of this, migration talks will be resumed, the Foreign Ministry said.
The head of Bilateral Issues of the U.S. Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yuri Gala, said in a televised appearance that the island rigorously complies with the Joint Declaration of January 2017 on these issues.
However, the U.S. violates the agreement to grant 20,000 visas annually, which is added to the suspension of consular procedures in Havana since the second half of that same year and the processing and granting of visas, the official said.
This forces people to travel to third countries at additional costs of money and with no guarantee that their requests will be met, he added.
Gala recalled that even though the Joint Declaration established Washington's elimination of the so-called Wet Foot Dry Foot Policy and the Parole Program for medical professionals, which encouraged irregular migration, another provision remains.
He refers to the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which continues to be a strong incentive for these behaviors, as it grants special privileges to Cuban migrants in the United States.
The diplomat pointed out that other pressures on the Caribbean nation, such as the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by Washington, and the more than 240 unilateral coercive measures applied by the U.S. administration, also encourage some to take risks.
These are not simply measures to increase the siege, but new methods, in some cases unprecedented, which have taken the machinery of economic warfare to a qualitatively more aggressive level, Gala emphasized.
'The damage that the unilateral coercive measures cause on the standard of living of the Cuban population is not coincidental nor is it a collateral effect, but it is above all the result of a deliberate purpose to cause the greatest possible damage, a punishment to the entire Cuban population as a whole,' he added.
