Cuban migration in 2018

HAVANA – 2018 was a complicated year for Cuban migrants.

Without officially announcing it the Donald Trump government has, in practice, suspended the migratory agreements of 1994, substantially affecting a flow that exceeded 20,000 persons per year.

The visits of Cubans to the United States have been reduced to a minimum as a result of the closure of the consulate in Havana. On the other hand, a clear slowdown is characterizing the application of the Cuban Adjustment Act, which affects the legal status of thousands of immigrants who have arrived in the U.S. from Cuba in recent years.

If we add to this the cancellation of the dry foot / wet foot policy in January 2017 during the Obama administration, which favored the permanence of illegal Cuban immigrants in the U.S., it is easy to see that in just a blink of an eye Cubans have gone from being the most privileged immigrants in the United States to one of the most restricted groups in the world.

What would have been considered a scandal in the past has happened without a whimper from any Cuban-American politician coming to the defense of their supposed political base. The main reason for this is that they are not. It is why the situation that created the exceptional nature of Cuban migrants in the U.S. has ceased to be functional for these politicians.

Now the opposite is true. What the Cuban-American right considers convenient is that fewer people arrive. And that they delay the process of becoming U.S. citizens.

Also influencing this decision is an interest to create political and social tensions in Cuba if you assume that migratory possibilities tend to “increase pressure on the domestic pressure cooker.”

However, what’s most worrisome for Cuba are not the difficulties in travel as a result of U.S. policy, but that migration continues to be very high — especially among young people of working age.

We’re dealing with an endogenous phenomenon related to the country’s economic situation and the satisfaction of the existential expectations of these sectors, so that its solution goes beyond the possibilities of any migration policy.

In any case, new migratory restrictions have not been established. The flow of migrants to other parts tends to compensate for the limitations imposed by the United States and the levels of illegal departures remain low, which has ensured some internal stability around this issue.

The Cuban migration policy deficits are no longer related to the processes of leaving and entering the country, but to the treatment of migrants during their stay abroad.

The policy adopted in 2013 tends to resolve the legal link with the country of those people who have emigrated as of that date, but the problem is with the restrictions for those who left before that, that has been maintained. Although the return of these people has been made easier and the official discourse is much more inclusive, a whole series of laws still complicate relations with Cuba’s emigration, and economically speaking these people are taxed excessively.

It makes little sense that:

• Cuban passports are one of the most expensive in the world, which works against back and forth travel, and may even be economically counterproductive; and that,
• the practice of traveling to the country be maintained or that updating the stay outside the national territory be so expensive; and that,
• because of customs’ policies, trade that should be encouraged to counteract the blockade is prevented. Also notable is that, whether legally or in practice, investing in Cuba by the emigrants is discriminated against.

The need to change these policies has been widely discussed in Cuba, but the slowness in assuming them has been the tone of this process.

The inclusion of these issues affecting Cuba’s emigrants in the recently concluded debates of the draft of the new Constitution and some of its sections were positive signs on the way to breaking this impasse. Perhaps 2019 will give us a more effective policy to integrate the emigrants into Cuba’s destiny.

This would be good for the majority of Cubans. It is possible in spite of the ultra-conservatives on both sides.