CARICOM seeking response to possible US visa revocation

Caribbean Community foreign ministers say they are expecting a meeting with a so far high-level but unnamed member of the Trump administration to discuss recent official threats to revoke the visas of Caribbean government officials in countries that host Cuban medical professionals.

Concerned that this new policy could affect nearly every CARICOM member state, the ministers met virtually over the weekend to discuss the issue, following up on the leaders’ meeting held in Barbados late last month. They had also looked at new policies of the Trump era and how these would affect the 15-nation bloc.

Trinidad Minister of Foreign Affairs Amery Browne said that the governments want “to seek additional information and clarifications from the US State Department as most of our member states have engagements with the Cuban medical brigade.

Additionally, CARICOM foreign ministers are arranging a meeting with the US special envoy for our region in Washington in the second week of March. This meeting was convened specifically to discuss a CARICOM response to the State Department’s announcement regarding states working with the Cuban medical brigade,” Browne said.

The rush to clarify the new policy followed a recent announcement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that foreign government officials linked to Cuba’s exportation of doctors, nurses, and other professionals overseas could have their American entry visas revoked as part “of the expansion of an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy that targets forced labor linked to the Cuban labor export program.”

Rubio had also complained about the imbalance created by the export of Cuban professionals, noting that “the programs, which include the medical missions, enrich the Cuban regime, and in the case of Cuba’s overseas medical missions, deprive ordinary Cubans of the medical care they desperately need in their home country,” Rubio said reminding that the US remains committed to countering forced labor practices around the globe.

So far, no CARICOM member state has made moves to cancel or scale back work permits for Cuban doctors and other medical professionals, who play an important role in the functioning of the grouping’s health care system.

Guyana, for example, has been recruiting Cubans for more than 40 years while sending thousands of local students to Cuba to study medicine, engineering, and other professions. Other regional neighbors have done the same.

Two weeks before the foreign ministers met, the leaders had expressed concern about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Cuba from the decades-old American embargo on the Caribbean island. “The conference renews its call for the lifting of the unilateral financial, economic, and trade embargo and for Cuba to be immediately removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism,” the summit’s communique stated.