Fernández de Cossío on immigration, blockade & why Cuba has not denounced Russia

The United States and Cuba held their highest-level talks in four years last week in Washington, where they discussed the soaring numbers of Cubans immigrating to the U.S. Democracy Now speaks with Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío, who participated in the talks.

He says the U.S. has failed to implement the mutually set immigration goals between the two countries, which, paired with economic sanctions on the island, has resulted in “irregular and uncontrolled migration” of Cubans to the U.S. “If the United States would have fulfilled its commitment of granting 20,000 visas a year, it would perfectly have avoided thousands of Cubans reaching the border of the United States,” says Fernández de Cossío, who blames the Biden administration for upholding the same destructive policies as the Trump administration, which applied maximum economic sanctions starting in 2019 to “make life as difficult as possible” in Cuba.

Fernández de Cossío also speaks about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying, “this war could have been avoided,” and calls out the U.S. for pushing “double standards” under the guise of international human rights law.