A limited increase in processing immigrant visa petitions in Havana will not include thousands of pending cases of a family reunification program suspended by the Trump administration, a senior State Department official told reporters on Monday.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana last week formally announced that it was resuming “limited” immigrant visa services, a first step towards fully resuming operations.
But there is no date set to begin these services, and the embassy announcement refers exclusively to family-sponsored immigrant visa petitions, Emily Mendrala, deputy assistant secretary on Cuba issues, said.
“We do not have a set schedule, there is much to do, but we are interested in starting processing the cases as soon as possible,” she said in Spanish.
The backlog of immigrant visa petitions has skyrocketed since 2017 when most consular services were suspended in Havana due to the mysterious illnesses that affected U.S. diplomats and officials starting in late 2016, and became known as “Havana syndrome.” No recent incidents have been reported in the Cuban capital, but the original cases are still under investigation.
The Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, handled separately by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, allows Cubans to come to the United States sooner and wait here for their immigrant visas. Although USCIS says the program is “in effect” on its website, the program has not taken new cases since September 2016.
“All processing in Havana, Cuba, has been suspended due to the significant drawdown in U.S. government personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Cuba for security reasons in 2017 and the permanent closure of the USCIS field office in Havana on Dec. 10, 2018,” the website says.
According to the latest estimate provided by USCIS and congressional offices, around 22,000 cases are pending under the program. Members of Congress from both parties have recently introduced legislation seeking to restart the program.
Mendrala said increasing consular services in Havana is a priority for the Biden administration in an effort to aid the reunification of Cuban families. But she declined to answer why the program has not resumed and directed questions to USCIS.
USCIS did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The U.S. Embassy in Havana said it would continue processing visa petitions in Guyana, where the agency moved its operations after the staff evacuation. Mendrala said the cases will be allocated to either country depending on “capacity.”
There are more than 90,000 family-sponsored immigrant visa petitions for Cubans pending, according to the State Department’s most recent figures for 2021.
Mendrala said that Cubans applying for visitor visas will still have to travel to a third country to be interviewed by a U.S. consular officer.
