Cuba, U.S. take step with talks on migration

Cuba and the United States took a tentative step toward thawing relations and resuming joint efforts to address irregular migration, a senior Cuban official said following the highest-level talks between the two countries in four years.

There were no major breakthroughs, but the fact that the U.S. was holding substantive talks was a sign relations might be looking better under President Joe Biden after going into deep freeze under his predecessor, Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said Friday.

“They seem committed. They ratified that they are committed to the agreements in place,“Fernandez de Cossio said. “So we have no reason to mistrust what they’re saying, but time will tell.”

The talks focused on restoring adherence to previous agreements that were intended to curtail the irregular migration from the island to the U.S.

“These talks helped both of us to understand the nature and the magnitude of the problem we’re facing,“the deputy foreign minister said.

U.S. officials want Cuba to resume taking back flights of deported migrants, which it stopped at the start of the COVID -19 pandemic.

Cuban authorities, meanwhile, want the U.S. to restore consular services in Havana, so people can again get visas to legally come to the United States, as well as change other policies that it believes encourage irregular migration from the island.