The US government may be getting closer to its promise to the Cuban people to issue 20,000 immigrant visas during this fiscal year.
To date, a total of 13,656 visas have been issued, according to US State Department data analyzed by El Nuevo Herald.
In the current fiscal year, which runs from October 2021 to September 30, an average of 1,517 visas were issued per month.
Here is a breakdown of the five visa categories with the most approved applications in fiscal year 2022.
Here is the definition of each:
IR5: Parents of children with US citizenship claimed.
FX: Spouses or children of permanent residents.
IR1: Foreign citizens who have been married to a US citizen for at least two years.
IR2: Unmarried children under the age of 21.
DP: Diversity Visa Program Lottery.
A total of 975 Cubans were winners of the Visa lottery drawing for this fiscal year. This means that there are still 433 petitions to be processed in this category.
Last May, President Joe Biden announced a series of measures to demonstrate his government’s support for the Cuban people.
How to apply for a visa for an immediate family member at the US Embassy in Havana
Many of these provisions were affected during Donald Trump’s presidency. Therefore, this could be the first time since 2017 that the US government would meet its goal of issuing 20,000 visas.
However, only 401 immigrant visas have been processed in Havana in the past two months.
“In reality, it’s an extremely low, ridiculous number for what the embassy in Havana is about to process,” Wilfredo O. Allen, an immigration attorney in Miami, said in statements to the CiberCuba portal.
The low number is because the US Embassy in Havana offers limited emergency nonimmigrant visa services. To find out more about the available processes, you can visit the embassy’s website.
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Many Cubans interested in applying for US visas were forced to travel to Guyana. The South American country has become one of the main centers to meet these requests.
“Keeping up visa processing in Guyana is a costly burden on Cuban applicants and their families,” Allen said.
Even the number of 20,000 visas that the Biden administration is aiming for does not appear to be enough to prevent undocumented immigration.
So far this fiscal year, more than 140,000 undocumented Cubans have entered the country. That number becomes the largest exodus of Cubans to the United States in more than six decades, beating the record set by Mariel in 1980, when nearly 125,000 Cubans arrived in just seven months.
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These are the visa services that the US Embassy in Havana will finally process