A year after announcing a review of U.S. policy toward Cuba, a top State Department official hinted the Biden administration was readying to move to increase visa processing in Havana.
Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere Brian Nichols told lawmakers during a hearing this week that the State Department was planning to beef up its personnel at the U.S. Embassy in the Cuban capital.
“The president announced our intent to resume visa services, we’re working toward that, and we’ll be deploying temporary duty consular officers to Havana in the not too distant future and increasing processing there,” Nichols said Thursday.
A State Department spokesperson declined to say when visa processing would resume in Havana.
“The administration committed to exploring options to ensure appropriate staffing at U.S. Embassy in Havana to facilitate diplomatic and civil society engagement and the provision of consular services, while maintaining an appropriate security posture,” the spokesperson said. “These options could include sending both temporary and longer-term personnel. At this time, we have no specific changes to announce.”
The State Department reduced the embassy staff and shut down most consular services in 2017 after several events now referred to by the Biden administration as “anomalous health incidents” that are still under investigation. The Trump administration also suspended the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which had allowed many Cuban Americans to bring their family members to the U.S. sooner than through the regular process.
The processing of immigration visas moved to the U.S. Embassy in Guyana, an expensive destination for Cubans. The COVID-19 pandemic further disrupted the process.
According to the State Department’s most recent figures for 2021, there are 90,771 pending family-sponsored immigrant visa petitions for Cubans, up from 78,228 cases in 2020. Cubans who want to travel to the U.S. to visit relatives also have to go to a third country for consular interviews.
The Biden administration promised to roll back many of the measures taken by the Trump administration and ordered a Cuba policy review during his first days in office. But the White House said the task was not a priority.
After a popular uprising in July, National Security Council officials said the administration had hit the “pause button” on the review out of concern for the human rights situation on the island.
“Thousands of Cuban Americans continue to be negatively impacted by the lack of visa services in Havana and restrictions on remittances and travel,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said at the Foreign Affairs committee’s hearing. “These Americans are unable to support their family in Cuba with remittances or reunite them through travel or immigration.”
President Joe Biden also ordered a study of ways to increase internet connectivity on the island. NSC officials later said technological hurdles make that difficult to achieve and shifted the focus to supporting tools to circumvent censorship.
The administration has remained silent on other issues like flights to Cuba, which are currently limited to Havana.
Also on Thursday, Miami Republican Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Giménez sent a letter to Biden calling for the resumption of consular services in Havana, prioritizing access to human rights activists and those with urgent humanitarian or medical need.
“It was particularly insulting to many in our districts when regime operatives, and their favorites such as the professional baseball players, were able to access on-island consular services while the vast majority of more deserving Cubans were forced to travel to a third country at considerable expense,” they wrote.
The representatives also asked the administration to resume the Cuban parole program and cited legislation they introduced to that effect, which proposes conducting in-person interviews at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, if restrictions on consular services continue. But the plan faces several logistical obstacles, not least that it requires the agreement of Cuban authorities.
Díaz-Balart told the Miami Herald that restoring consular services at the embassy should go along with other conditions like denying employment at the embassy to Cuban nationals linked to the government and limiting the number of Cuban diplomats stationed at the Cuban Embassy in Washington.
“Any action taken to resume consular services that does not include these conditions would be dangerous and irresponsible,” he said.
The deterioration of human rights on the island and fears that a policy of engagement could be politically costly with Cuban American voters in Florida have weighed on the administration’s decision to hold back on any moves on Cuba.
Instead, the administration has focused on punishing Cuban security agencies and officials involved in the crackdown on the July 11 protests with several rounds of sanctions. Cuban authorities acknowledged they have imprisoned more than 700 protesters; among them, “there are many, many children who have been sentenced to eight and ten years in prison under harsh conditions, and it’s a shocking abuse of human rights,” Nichols said at the hearing.
But several other elements of the policy review remain on hold, including a study directed by Biden to find a way to resume remittances to Cuba without benefiting the Cuban government.
“The remittances working group has provided its recommendations to the White House with ways that we could expand the use of remittances on the island without increasing the funds that would go to the Cuban government military,” Nichols said. “Those recommendations are with the White House, and we await their decision.”
Asked about what the Cuban government could do to encourage changes on the U.S. side, Nichols said it “could release the hundreds of political prisoners that it’s arrested since July of last year, particularly the children, the people that have been sentenced to harsh prison sentences.”
“That would be an important first step for Cuba to take,” he added.
But the mixed messages on Cuba from the White House have been frustrating for those on the opposite side of the debate.
Florida Republicans regularly criticized the administration for what they perceived as a lack of action.
“I am pretty frustrated,” Salazar said at the hearing. “What is the Biden administration doing?” she asked in reference to the growing repression in Cuba and Nicaragua.
Others in the business community are puzzled for what they see as an abandonment of what is supposed to be a pillar of U.S. policy toward Cuba: the support of the private sector.
The Treasury Department has not answered a request for clarification on whether direct financing to the Cuban private sector is allowed under the current regulations, said John Kavulich, the president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
“The Biden-Harris administration is politically constipated when it comes to Cuba policy,” he said.
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