{"id":254136,"date":"2022-06-14T17:42:54","date_gmt":"2022-06-14T21:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=254136"},"modified":"2022-06-14T17:42:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T21:42:54","slug":"to-get-to-the-north-the-legal-route-of-guyana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/migration\/to-get-to-the-north-the-legal-route-of-guyana\/","title":{"rendered":"To get to the North: the (legal) route of Guyana"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of 2017, in the context of the so-called \u201csonic attacks,\u201d the Trump administration decided to withdraw 60% of its diplomatic staff at the Embassy in Havana, reduce\/discontinue consular services and, in fact, suspend migration agreements.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the effects of the move was to change the location of the interviews for immigrants. First it was the Embassy of the United States in Bogot\u00e1, but as of April 1, 2018, they selected the Embassy in Guyana as the main site, a country to which nationals can enter without visas, which would bring with it a set of effects and problems, both for themselves and for their relatives in the United States.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our interviewee went through the Guyanese experience twice: first as an emigrant and later for having claimed, together with her husband, a minor child.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the story she told us for <\/span>OnCuba<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Booking the Havana-Guyana ticket<\/b><\/p>\n

I was married five years ago to my husband, who is a U.S. citizen, and in order to live in this country, I had to go through the experience of going to Guyana. I have lived in Tampa for three years. But this time he and I had to return to Guyana because we received an email with the date of the interview of my 17-year-old son, whom we had claimed from Cuba.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the beginning there were problems. The first was to get a ticket to take him from Havana to Guyana, so that he could appear for the interview on the date that had been scheduled for him. We went crazy looking for it, but there wasn\u2019t, or rather, the ones that were available were very expensive. From the outset, we bought the Havana-Panama flight through Copa Airlines, but once the reservation was made, it had to be canceled because, as you will remember, Panama set the famous transit visa for Cubans as a condition.<\/span><\/p>\n

This affected us directly, because the Panamanian Embassy in Miramar was then very busy and it was not easy to get an appointment. We even tried to arrange the appointment from the Consulate here in Tampa; we went, but it was in vain: we couldn\u2019t do it. It was necessary to do it then in Havana. That Havana-Panama ticket cost us 1,800 dollars. We had to cancel it for that reason.<\/span><\/p>\n

The alternatives<\/b><\/p>\n

So we began to look for ways to get him out of Havana and take him to Georgetown using other Caribbean destinations, but we couldn\u2019t either. We even thought about canceling the date of the interview, but in the end some friends connected us with the black market for tickets (I didn\u2019t know that existed) and we were able to get a ticket from Havana to Guyana with a stopover in Aruba for 3,800 dollars. As expensive as traveling to China or Vietnam, you can imagine why; but there was no other way. Ah, sorry, before we had found another ticket, but that was too much: they asked us for 5,000 dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, we were able to get him out of Cuba. My son arrived in Guyana at 3 p.m. A taxi driver that my husband had met on the previous trip, when he went to pick me up, picked him up at the airport and from there took him to the hostel that we had booked for him while waiting for the two of us to arrive in Guyana.<\/span><\/p>\n

Central American migratory route: testimony of a Cuban migrant (I)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n