An announcement by the U.S. migration authorities has stirred up hopes in the Cuban community residing in that country. The Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program (CFPR) has been updated and plans to speed up the procedures to grant an immigrant visa to the program beneficiaries: spouses and single children of permanent residents, and siblings and parents of naturalized citizens.
In an exchange with Facebook users, the U.S. embassy in Havana specified that only those persons who have received in recent days a letter of invitation to join the program, sent by the National Visa Center (NVC), of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), will be able to opt for this facility.
“The CFRP program does not include the children (of beneficiaries) who are 21 and older,” affirmed the consular officer of the diplomatic mission answering a question presented by dozens of Cubans registered in the processes of the so-called “reclamación” (petitioner in the U.S.).
“This program’s first interviews are previewed for the end of the first quarter of 2017. We cannot anticipate how long the processing of each case will take,” they added.
According to the official page that describes the process, the immediate family members of U.S. citizens are not eligible for the CFRP, since they can immediately apply for the immigrant visa once their Form I-130 has been approved.
“Direct family members are: spouses of U.S. citizens, single children under 21 years old of U.S. citizens and the parents of U.S. citizens older than 21 years old.”
Bringing forward the CFRP is for those “indirect” family members who up to now have not had access to an immigrant visa.
“Do not apply for the CFRP program until the National Visa Center sends you the invitation to apply,” the communiqué points out. “The possible beneficiaries who are in Cuba cannot make the application themselves.”
“We do not have an estimated waiting time for the persons after the documentation has been handed in. There are many factors that have a bearing on the speeding up of the process,” the embassy insisted.
Like any migratory issue, the matter has generated a great deal of interest, especially in the Cuban-American community, growing in number and yearning to have with them the greatest amount of family members who have remained on the island.
However, the announcement of this “technical” procedure has come at the same time as more people are voicing they are against a change in the U.S. migratory policies toward Cuba.
In recent days, the foreign ministers of nine Central American and South American countries sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry requesting that his country modify the Cuban Adjustment Act and the policy of “wet foot, dry foot” which encourages illegal emigration.
Some 125,000 nationals from the archipelago have arrived in the United States through different means in the last four years, many of them through land routes that recently created bottlenecks and migratory crises in countries like Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador.
Now The New York Times has also joined in asking for changes in a policy it calls “anachronistic” and “irrational.” According to the newspaper, though the Obama administration has been reluctant to implement changes for fear of causing a greater exodus, delay “will make this nettlesome problem only worse.”
“As it stands, this anachronistic policy is irrational, strains relations with America’s neighbors and endangers lives. It also has the effect of easing pressure on Cuba’s authoritarian government to make economic and political reforms by offering an incentive to those who are most dissatisfied with the status quo to take a dangerous way out,” said The New York Times.
