Buildings adorned with their distinctive color palette can found in Havana City’s Parque Central, or Central Park, which is filled with landmarks and historic colonial buildings with arches and balconies. Photo by Alex Waltner
By Michael Tapley
Located just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba has mystified and beguiled the United States since long before its revolution in 1959. Despite an island filled with potential, the Cuban government has done little to create the flourishing, egalitarian society once promised to their people. In fact, statistics show that the island is much worse off now than it was more than six decades ago. All the while, people-to-people ties between the United States and Cuba persisted and strengthened, leading to immigration laws specific to Cuban citizens that profoundly impact both countries.
Embassy Havana is returning staffing to previous levels following some of its most challenging days since the resumption of its official presence in 2015. Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs) and COVID-19 took an immense toll on the Mission, eventually reducing operations and embassy staffing to a skeleton crew. But now, amid the worst migration and economic crisis the island has ever seen, the consular section is leading the way to a new normal.
In August 2017, Hurricane Irma hit Havana and severely damaged the chancery. The next month, AHIs forced a drastic reduction in staffing. Given the importance of protecting staff, the very difficult decision was made to reduce consular operations indefinitely to ensure the safety of the embassy team. While emergency American Citizen Services (ACS) continued, nonimmigrant visas came to a halt and immigrant visa (IV) appointments shifted first to Bogotá, Colombia, and then to Georgetown, Guyana, in an effort to maintain legal migration pathways to the United States. Redirecting Cubans to two unfamiliar countries was a huge financial burden for applicants, and significantly impacted international relations between Cuba and many countries in the region. Further compounding the issue, the consular section reduced its local staff footprint to a quarter of normal staffing, a difficult decision that seriously impacted morale. Unknown to everyone at the time, the suspension in services would go on to last nearly five years.
Consular Havana remained a focus during this period receiving, monthly, more than 5,000 individual inquiries and over 100 congressional inquiries, which highlighted the strain consular service interruptions put on families who had waited for years to reunite with their loved ones. Additionally, in 1994, the U.S. and Cuba, as part of the U.S.-Cuba Migration Accords, agreed that the United States would issue a minimum of 20,000 immigration documents per year. That goal had not been met since 2017 and was affecting bilateral relations and the embassy’s efforts to promote human rights and democracy on the island.
In 2021, consular managers on the ground began planning with Washington to slowly return IV and ACS services to normal. While many consular sections around the world had resumed regular services following the pandemic, few faced the unique factors of the Cuban government and U.S. political priorities, which complicated every step of this process. Due to Cuban government control over hiring local staff, approving officer housing, designating panel physician hospital capacity, and restricting diplomatic shipments, ramping up was a daunting task. It took months of intense preparations to finally announce the resumption of immediate relative IV interviews (parents, children, and spouses of U.S. citizens) in Havana and in May 2022, the first IV interviews in five years were hailed with relief and excitement by Cuban citizens. But calls for more action persisted.
Despite the effort to maintain consular services, the desperation of Cubans to be reunited with loved ones, coupled with worsening economic and political conditions on the island, led to an uncontrolled exodus. By September 2022, the irregular flows of Cubans to the United States reached all-time highs. More than 224,000 Cubans arrived at the U.S. Southwest border alone in FY 2022. Irregular maritime migration also spiked. In the first quarter of FY23, nearly 7,000 migrants, a 700% increase from the previous year, attempted the treacherous journey across the Florida Straits in small handmade crafts, many of which tragically never made it to their destination. Sadly, the embassy continues to receive calls from Cuban families looking for definitive news on the fate of their family members who launched with hope from Cuban shores but were never heard from again. In another example, in January 2023, Dry Tortugas National Park located off the coast of Florida was forced to close temporarily to deal with a surge of approximately 300 irregular migrants who unexpectedly arrived on shore. There are numerous stories of capsized migrants succumbing to the waves or being attacked by sharks trying to make the journey. Unfortunately, these realities fail to deter irregular migrants.
As irregular migration surged, the Department of State tasked Embassy Havana with a goal to fully reopen IV operations. Once again, consular section management and their team engaged in the months-long process of hiring more local staff and worked with Washington to fill vacant officer positions. Discussions with the Cuban government intensified to increase panel physician capacity from 500 applicants per month to more than 7,000—a staggering number for the size of Havana’s consular section.
Management began the difficult task of rebuilding the housing pool to accommodate a four-fold increase in officers while eliminating shared housing. Furthermore, consular section leadership strategically began to build trust and cooperation with working-level Cuban counterparts. This resulted in more frank communications and a reduction in reciprocity issues, benefitting not only consular operations but all U.S. diplomatic engagement on the island.
The preparations paid off and a full eight months sooner than originally planned, the embassy announced the full return of IV operations in Havana on January 4. The move garnered significant local and U.S. media interest and attention among Department and White House leadership; the efforts even earned specific recognition in the Cuban government’s United Nations General Assembly speech. It was clear to everyone, not least to the local staff, that the United States was back on the ground.
Building on the momentum of better working-level relations with the Cuban government, the embassy continues to add new local and Foreign Service positions to the consular, political/economic, public diplomacy, and management sections. And, with Havana removed from the list of Special Incentive Posts, tours of duty in Havana have been extended from one to two years and officers can now be accompanied by their spouses. As the embassy grows, it is better positioned to carry out the Biden Administration’s primary foreign policy goals for Cuba: meaningful support for the Cuban people and holding the Cuban government accountable for human rights abuses. Anyone who witnessed the historic popular protests of July 11, 2021, and the resulting hundreds of peaceful participants who were imprisoned for lengthy sentences, including minors, knows the importance these goals have for the island.
The consular section in Havana occupies an outsized role and influence in the bilateral relationship between Cuba and the United States. And now, thanks to the incredible dedication and hard work from the team in Georgetown to give them a head start, Havana’s small consular section is on track to meet the Cuban Migration Accord obligations in the current fiscal year. Consular statistics, policy changes, and presence on the island are watched with great interest not only by the Cuban government but by the U.S. Congress, Cuban-Americans, and by Cuban families who see the United States as their only hope for a future. Only time will tell how the U.S.-Cuba story will develop, but one thing is clear: the consular section’s accomplishments in Cuba will continue to highlight the incredible importance consular relations have on history, family connections, and the very real impact U.S. foreign policy has on human lives.
Michael Tapley is the deputy consular chief at Embassy Havana.
