Immigration talks or flirting with the dictatorship?

Feels as a deja vu, these migratory talks, Obama redux.

Yoandy Castañeda Lorenzo via Diario Las Americas:

Return to the thaw or migratory blackmail?

The round of migratory talks between Cuba and the United States arouses hives in exile and within the island due to the consequences that unilateral decisions could bring

Today many breathe the “Deja Vú” of impotence. The term coined by the French researcher Émile Boirac in his book, “The future of psychic sciences” defines the process where the human being seems to recognize passages or experiences as if he had already lived them. In the midst of the conversations between Cuba and USA on the immigration issue, announced with a veil of secrecy by the White House, the mind flies and teleports, inexorably, to the fiasco of the thaw promoted, as a political legacy, by former President Barack Obama whose summary could be “give a lot to I change little, or nothing” or as the popular proverb coin: “change the cow for the goat”. It is necessary to remember that Joe Biden was during the eight years the running mate and co-participant of the disdain and mocking rhetoric towards the people of the largest of the Antilles.

Obama, with his easy and warm smile, sat down at a domino table with comedians from the island as a sign of opening (although the lyrics of the song Patria y Vida are blocked as he proclaims), he said “Que bolá asere”, he ate in a paladar (restaurant), attended the “Latino” at a baseball game. However, he freed the spies responsible for the shooting down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes, shook hands with dictator Raúl Castro, turned his back on civil society and the opposition, and to top it off, eliminated the wet foot dry foot policy. and with it the possibilities to those who escaped in search of freedom. Back then, just like now, everything was cooked in secret. Without taking into account neither the exile nor the Cuban-American politicians.

The then President Obama asked Congress several times to lift the embargo, which would have led to granting credits (which they never pay) to the Havana regime and legitimizing the barbarity and outrage that are part of its repressive mechanisms.

In a conversation with DIARIO LAS AMERICAS, Ramón Saúl Sánchez of the Democracy movement, maintained: “For months we have been saying that a massive, silent exodus was taking place and the factor of encouragement by the dictatorship was also introduced. The dictatorship stimulated and continues to stimulate the exodus to create that factor of negotiation and blackmailing the United States and sitting them at the negotiating table. It has worked for them for 63 years so why not try now that they have the noose around their necks and that is what they did and not surprisingly, no Washington responded with those reflexes. What worries us is that when the two of them get together, the one who loses is always the people of Cuba. Concessions are made to the dictatorship. The dictatorship is already giving some indications that it wants to be treated like other countries in the region.Cubans . Look at what an equation, what an infamy of the two parties”

The United States is allegedly seeking to reactivate the migratory agreements with Cuba that were discontinued, according to the Secretary of Internal Security, Alejandro Mayorkas: “We have had migratory agreements with Cuba for many years. We are going to explore the possibility of reactivating them,” he said in Panama City during continental meeting to address the causes of the growing irregular migration.

Mayorkas assured that the meeting, scheduled for April 21 in Washington, is part of the US commitment to allow “a safe, humanitarian and orderly migration.” The goal, he said, is to prevent migrants from “throwing themselves into the sea, because they are totally dangerous journeys.”

According to official data, from October 2021 to March 2022, more than 78,000 Cubans entered the country through the border with Mexico, a figure that doubles the number of nationals who left the island during the so-called “rafter crisis” for a month. in 1994.

[…]

Immigration attorney Santiago Alpízar told DIARIO LAS AMERICAS: “They are not conducting credible fear interviews, the open door policy favors that. They (those who arrive at the border) are being allowed to enter with only an inspection and are released with the I220A document (it is not accepted as a legal entry to the US but is a supervised release permit while they litigate their refugee case politician). People who come as a family, mom and dad married with minor children release them with “parole (temporary stay permit)” even if they are “foreigners present in the US.” Those who left Cuba after Nicaragua’s free visa and came as a family nucleus, I have observed, have been subjected to this procedure. But they must be adjusted in court, equally.

[…]

DIARIO LAS AMERICAS made contact with several Cubans on the island and there is a fear that the current rounds will hinder the arrival of the thousands of people stranded in the South American geography heading to the southern border:

“My brother arrived in Guatemala yesterday, he sold everything here to be able to pay for the trip, if they change something and it is returned, he will simply have lost everything,” commented Javier Santoya from Matanzas.

Independent journalist and blogger Yoani Sánchez told Radio Martí: “Limitations may come, restrictions may come, and you may also see agreements between the two administrations to, for example, be able to deport more Cubans who are in US territory to the island.” , pointed out the journalist.

In fact, Cuba has stopped accepting deported Cubans since 2021.

Cuban activists in exile, for their part, point out the urgency of putting on the dialogue table: “The only points to be discussed with the dictatorship are: immediate release of all political prisoners, respect for the human rights of Cubans, including free elections. Of course, these are not in the conversation, they are conditions before sitting down. And the migration crisis is over,” said Rosa María Payá, coordinator of the civic platform Cuba Decide.

The Assembly of the Cuban Resistance also expressed its rejection of the announcement of new migration talks. In a statement they stated “The Castro regime is a regime that violates human rights that has committed and commits crimes against humanity. The exchange at the level of negotiations of this type less than a year after the popular rebellion of July 11 in Cuba with the consequent series of trials and massive convictions of the protesters constitutes a true gift to a dictatorship that must be punished for their oppression of the Cuban people.”

Lawyer Alpízar maintains: “These are meetings without transparency (for 18 months Obama did the same thing with the Castro elite) everything seems aimed at a new rapprochement. It is not known for sure if they are going to be profitable or not, there are thousands and thousands of backlogged cases that have already been paid and processed…for now and definitively, the White House gave in to the migratory blackmail orchestrated from Havana”

There will be concessions. The question is what would they be and in exchange for what?

Continue reading HERE.