100,000 in limbo as U.S. visa backlog grows
MIAMI — When María Sulay López arrived in the United States in 2014, she assumed her son in Cuba would quickly get a visa to join her. But almost seven years later, the breast cancer patient still doesn’t know when they will be together.
As she gasped for breath from an oxygen tank, a result of a permanent tracheotomy, López said she can no longer work and just wants a solution.
“I’ve been waiting a long time,” she said on a recent afternoon. “And look at the condition I’m in.”
The case is among some 100,000 filed by Cubans and Cuban Americans in the U.S. hoping to reunite with family members on the island which are on hold as visa processing at the Havana embassy remains suspended. As the Biden administration reviews its Cuba policy, some in the exile community are clamoring for a quick resolution. The U.S. government withdrew most of its staff in 2017 after numerous diplomats fell ill from a mysterious ailment whose cause is still unknown but some suspect was an attack from a foreign adversary.
According to a U.S. State Department report, 78,228 family-based immigration claims are pending at the National Visa Center, which processes approved petitions, as of last November. Cuba is now among the 10 countries with the highest number of pending cases, according to the report.
That figure does not include those who are waiting for interviews at the embassy, a State Department official told the Miami Herald. Meanwhile, another 22,000 are on standby through the Cuban Family Reunification Parole Program, which provides a fast-track for some petitioners with relatives in the U.S.
The enormous backlog has left thousands of Cuban families in limbo for more than four years. Ana Santiago, a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services spokeswoman, said the agency sent invitations to all eligible applicants to participate in the family reunification program in late 2016 and planned to do so again in 2017. But later that year, visa processing was halted. In 2018, the USCIS office in Havana was closed and refugee processing suspended. Combined with Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and pandemic travel restrictions, many families have been left uncertain when they’ll be reunited.
A State Department official could not say when Havana’s embassy would resume visa services but said the U.S. remains committed to safe and legal migration.
Lourdes Hernández, who lives in Jacksonville, has been trying to bring her daughter, now 32, since 2014. Two years later, she received an invitation to participate in the reunification program. She sent in the paperwork and a $360 payment. Her daughter dropped out of college, thinking her departure was imminent, and put off other personal milestones, like getting married, that could delay or complicate her application.
But it would be years before she heard from the government again. Shortly before the pandemic, U.S. authorities informed her an immigration visa was available, but then travel restrictions hit.
“This has affected our entire lives,” Hernández said between sobs. “My daughter has her uncles and grandmother in Cuba, but she doesn’t have me, unfortunately.”
A broken immigration system for Cubans was, in part, the collateral damage of the mysterious incidents that affected the health of U.S. diplomats, their families, and CIA agents in the Cuban capital between the end of 2016 and May 2018.