In June 2023, Milagros Rodríguez left Cuba for Uruguay with the intention of starting a new life in Montevideo. To reach the South American country he had to make “the journey,” as his countrymen call the trip by air and land that starts in Havana, stops in Guyana, continues through Brazil until reaching the border with Uruguay. That journey is a lottery, Rodríguez acknowledges: anyone can fall into human trafficking networks or may luck be with them and arrive safely, always paying what is determined by those who manage the route. Six days into the trip, he touched the border with Uruguay and was able to enter as a refugee applicant.
“In Havana everything is complicated,” says Rodríguez, 36, in a talk with EL PAÍS. When he decided to meet with his partner, who has lived in Uruguay since 2019 and is also Cuban, he tried to do so with his three children, ages 9, 15 and 16. But the four's trip was impossible, he says, because he did not meet the requirements (economic solvency, above all) demanded by the Uruguayan embassy in Cuba to grant them visas. He then chose to take a risk and make “the journey” via Guyana, a country that does not require a visa for Cubans, always with the idea of being able to finance the trip of his three children after settling in Uruguay. In Montevideo she works as a cleaner and has a temporary identity document. “But things didn't turn out the way she thought,” says Rodríguez.
Uruguay closed the year 2023 with 24,193 accumulated refugee applications, pending resolution, according to a report published by the local newspaper The Observer. “The system collapsed,” says the text based on data from the Refugee Commission, according to which the average wait for an interview with the applicant is two years. In 2023 alone, the report indicates, 9,129 people requested refuge in Uruguay, of which 7,293 were Cubans. While their cases are not resolved, the country grants them a provisional document for two years, with which they can work, access health and education services, but it does not enable them to family reunification, as Rodríguez and a good part of his followers intend. compatriots. In this context, many choose to renounce this request for refuge and seek to process permanent residence.
“A very high number of refugee applications are being rejected (…) because many people come for economic reasons, especially from Cuba, they request refuge for political reasons.” [como lo exige la ley] and it is not appropriate to grant it,” said the Uruguayan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Omar Paganini, days ago. It is a “delicate situation,” Paganini said on channel 12, which the Government wants to resolve “very soon.” “We are working to find a solution for those who do not qualify for shelter, but are living among us and should go through a residency process. The legal conditions today are not clear and remain in a limbo situation,” he acknowledged.
Like any foreigner, Cubans who are in Uruguay can apply for and obtain this type of residency if they meet the requirements. If applicable, they must present documentation with the corresponding consular visa, because Cubans need a visa to enter Uruguay, as well as Uruguayans to enter Cuba. To obtain this visa, Cuban refugee seekers used to travel to a Uruguayan consulate in Brazil, even if they had been living in Uruguayan territory for one or more years. That way, as Kafkaesque as it was, they obtained the visa and continued with the residency process. But this possibility of obtaining a Uruguayan visa in Brazil began to become complicated as of January 2023.
Since then, Uruguay decided to restrict it by requiring a stamp or stamp of entry and exit from Brazil in the Cuban passport, according to Madelyn del Río, a member of the Manos Cubanas collective. And that transit stamp, says Del Río, is not usually stamped by the Brazilian authorities at the immigration posts on the dry border. The path was even narrower when, in December 2023, the Foreign Ministry sent instructions to its consulates explaining that people residing in Uruguay as refugee seekers could not apply for the visa in question.
Due to this situation, the organizations that bring together Cubans in Uruguay maintain that at least 5,000 people with that nationality are in “immigration limbo”: they do not have refugee status in the country and cannot renounce the refugee application to process residency. permanent that would allow family reunification. This is the case of Milagros Rodríguez, who together with his compatriots asks the Uruguayan State to exempt those who have lived in Uruguay for a reasonable amount of time from visa requirements, as already happened during the Covid-19 pandemic. “An exemption from that visa or another solution that is definitive,” says Rodríguez.
“If the necessary legal change is promoted, if our immigration status is resolved, it would alleviate the concerns of thousands of Cubans. Thousands of Cubans who are now employees of many companies, thousands of Cubans who have opened our own companies and have created more jobs with this,” says a petition published this month on the Change.org platform addressed to the Government of Luis Lacalle Pou. parliamentarians in general. “We are already in Uruguay, we already work for Uruguay,” they add, “why do you have to be special to legally reside in a country that has already welcomed us.”
According to preliminary data from the 2023 census, nearly 62,000 people born abroad live in Uruguay, of which 12,000 are Cuban (Cuban organizations estimate that this number has doubled recently). This migratory movement allowed the Uruguayan population (3.4 million) to grow by a tight 1% in 10 years and prevented it from shrinking. “Hopefully we have entered a new wave of immigration,” Isaac Alfie, president of the National Census Commission, said at the time. But is Uruguay really a country with open doors for all migrants? It is a question that social organizations ask themselves, regarding the situation that these thousands of Cubans are going through.
“It is very contradictory when the State presents a National Integration Plan [para personas migrantes, solicitantes de refugio y refugiadas 2023-24] and at the same time these obstacles are put in place,” Rinche Roodenburg, a member of the Migrant Support Network and volunteer with the Jesuit Migrant Service, tells EL PAÍS. “If we are so worried because Uruguay's population is not growing and it is said that immigration saves those numbers,” she continues, “then we would have to lay out a red carpet so that people can come and live happily.” For Roodenburg, in the case of Cuban immigrants “the most serious thing is that family reunification is not allowed,” under current conditions.
“This situation greatly affects me because my children remain separated from me, losing all the possibilities that this wonderful country offers. I would like to bring them through family reunification, because the idea of putting them in the hands of human trafficking terrifies me. [en el trayecto vía Guyana-Brasil]”, laments Milagros Rodríguez.
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