At least 5,000 Cubans request residency regularization in Uruguay: ‘We’re in limbo’

In June 2023, Milagros Rodríguez left Cuba for Uruguay with the aim of beginning a new life in Montevideo. To reach the South American country, she had to make “the crossing,” as her compatriots call the journey by air and land that starts in Havana, passes through Guyana, continues through Brazil and arrives at the border with Uruguay. This journey is a lottery, says Rodríguez: anyone can become a victim of human trafficking or get lucky and arrive safely, while always having to pay whatever those who manage the route decide. Six days into the journey, she reached the border with Uruguay and succeeded in entering the country as a refugee applicant.

“Everything is difficult in Havana”, says 36-year-old Rodríguez, in a conversation with EL PAÍS. When she decided to reunite with her partner, who has been living in Uruguay since 2019 and is also Cuban, she attempted to do so with her three children, aged 9, 15 and 16. However, the journey involving the four of them proved impossible, she adds, because they did not meet the requirements (particularly financial solvency) demanded by the Uruguayan embassy in Cuba to be granted visas. She decided to run the risk and make the “crossing” via Guyana, a country that does not require a visa for Cubans. She hoped to be able to pay for her three children’s trip after settling in Uruguay. In Montevideo, she works as a cleaner and holds a provisional identity card. “But things didn’t turn out the way I thought they would,” says Rodríguez.

At the end of 2023, Uruguay had 24,193 accumulated refugee applications pending resolution, according to a report published by the local newspaper El Observador. “The system collapsed,” reads the text based on data from the Refugee Commission, according to which the average waiting time for an interview with the applicant is two years. In 2023 alone, according to the report, 9,129 people sought refuge in Uruguay, of which 7,293 were Cubans. Until their cases are resolved, the country issues them a provisional document for two years. This allows them to work and access health and education services, but it does not entitle them to family reunification, which Rodríguez and many of her compatriots are striving to achieve. Faced with this situation, many choose to renounce their refugee status and seek permanent residency.

“A very high number of refugee applications are being rejected (...) because many people come for economic reasons, especially from Cuba, they apply for refugee status for political reasons [as required by law] and this is not the appropriate way to grant it,” said the Uruguayan minister of foreign affairs, Omar Paganini, a few days ago. On Uruguay’s Canal 12, Paganini described it as a “delicate situation,” which the government is looking to solve “as soon as possible.” “We are working to find a solution for those who are not entitled to refugee status, but are living among us and must undergo a residency process. The legal conditions today are not clear and they are left in a situation of limbo,” he explained.

As is the case with any foreigner, Cubans in Uruguay can apply for and obtain this type of residency provided they meet the requirements. In their case, they need to present the documentation with the corresponding consular visa, because Cubans need a visa to enter Uruguay, just as Uruguayans need one to enter Cuba. Previously, to obtain this visa, Cuban asylum seekers would travel to a Uruguayan consulate in Brazil, even if they had been living in Uruguayan territory for more than one year. In this way, as Kafkaesque as it may have been, they obtained the visa and proceeded with the residency process. Nevertheless, the possibility of obtaining the Uruguayan visa in Brazil became more complex as of January 2023.

Since then, Uruguay resolved to restrict it by requiring an entry and exit stamp in the Cuban passport, according to Madelyn del Río, a member of the Manos Cubanas collective. And this passage stamp, says del Río, is not usually issued by the Brazilian authorities at the migration posts at the land border. In December 2023, the path was further restricted when the Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed its consulates that people residing in Uruguay as asylum seekers could not apply for the visa in question.

As a result of this situation, the organizations that bring together Cubans in Uruguay claim that at least 5,000 people of Cuban nationality are in a situation of “migratory limbo”: they do not enjoy refugee status in the country, and they cannot renounce their refugee application to apply for permanent residency that would allow them to reunite with their families. This is the case of Milagros Rodríguez, who together with her compatriots is calling on the Uruguayan government to waive visa requirements for those who have been living in Uruguay for a considerable time, as occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. “A visa waiver or another definitive solution,” explains Rodríguez.

“If the necessary legal change is brought about, if our immigration status is resolved, it would ease the worries of thousands of Cubans. Thousands of Cubans who are now employed by many companies, thousands of Cubans who have opened their own companies and have created more employment,” states a petition published this month on the Change.org platform addressed to the government of Luis Lacalle Pou and to parliamentarians in general. “We are already in Uruguay, we are already working for Uruguay,” they add, “why do you have to be special to reside legally in a country that has already welcomed us?”

According to preliminary data from the 2023 census, approximately 62,000 foreign-born individuals live in Uruguay, of which 12,000 are Cuban (Cuban organizations estimate that this figure has doubled recently). This migratory movement caused Uruguay’s population (3.4 million) to grow by a modest 1% in 10 years and prevented it from shrinking. “Let’s hope that 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? This is a question that social organizations are pondering, given the situation of these thousands of Cubans.

“It is very contradictory when the state presents a National Integration Plan [for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees (2023-24)] and at the same time these obstacles are imposed,” Rinche Roodenburg, member of the Migrant Support Network and volunteer of the Jesuit Migrant Service, told EL PAÍS. “If we are so worried because Uruguay’s population is not growing and it is believed that immigration is saving those numbers,” he continues, “we would have to lay down a red carpet so that people can come and live happily.” According to Roodenburg, for Cuban immigrants “the most serious issue is that family reunification is not allowed” under the current conditions.

“This situation affects me greatly because I am still separated from my children, and they are missing out on all the possibilities that this wonderful country has to offer. I would like to bring them here through family reunification, because I’m terrified of the idea of putting them in the hands of human trafficking [on the Guyana-Brazil route],” bemoans Milagros Rodríguez.

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