Packing the Embassy Lobbies

Packing the Embassy Lobbies
May 17, 2012
Dariela Aquique

HAVANA TIMES — Recently, my friend and fellow Havana Times writer
Alfredo Fernandez wrote a post titled Let the Skies Fill with Airplanes.
With his rich style as a commentator, he responded to a thoughtless
remark made a while back by Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the Cuba's
National Assembly of Popular Power.

Alfredo was referring to an absurd response given by Alarcon to Eliecer
Avila, a student at UCI (the University of Computer Science), when the
parliament leader was visiting the school a little over four years ago.
The student had raised questions about Cuba's restrictions on
international travel.

The young man touched a nerve center concerning one of the civil
liberties of Cuban nationals that has been restricted for decades: the
right to travel, to get know other parts of the world by choice.

As we know, the options for Cubans to leave the country are reduced to:

- Permanent relocation for family reunification (mostly to the United
States)
- Leaving after marrying a foreigner
- Departing to serve in foreign aid missions and development work in
other countries
- Competitions or events (usually sports related)
- Upon receipt of a letter of invitation from friends, relatives or
foreigners living abroad
- And finally — sadly enough — by illegal departures (which have cost
many lives)

This list excludes choices by any individual who saves up to travel
outside the country. That right has been denied us and has resulted in
inhabitants of the island coming up with all types of means imaginable
to leave the island.

Even though resistance to such a right is inexcusable, all the leader of
the nation's parliament could say was that "if everyone traveled, the
skies would be filled with airplanes," and then we'd be talking about
airplane accidents.

Nonetheless, as the country is making efforts at an updated version of
its own perestroika, migration policy is one of the elements that must
also change.

Since the last Communist Party congress, certain hints were made in this
regard; they also promised to touch on these at the subsequent Party
Conference (eight months later), but to date all decisions around this
issue have remained pending, meaning the only thing that people can do
is wait in great anticipation.

There has still not been any official announcement concerning the
enactment of new laws regarding this matter, but it has been leaked that
in meetings with party activists and with agents of State Security that
in the coming days the media will be reporting the status of the updated
laws.

A silent euphoria surrounds Cubans who imagine themselves obtaining
passports, applying for visas and buying tickets to see the Caribbean,
Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East (with all of this
of course depending on their budgets and the approval of visas by the
embassies or consulates of the countries they wish to visit).

Although the financial precariousness of Cubans may not leave them much
choice but to save for years to be able to travel to nearby islets here
in the Caribbean, and while even that might sound like a pipe dream, it
doesn't matter – they'll be happy to know that they won't need a Carta
Blanca (exit permit) or have to wade through the tons of red tape at the
immigration office.

I don't think we are going to be the ones who "fill the skies with
airplanes," though we could end up filling the lobbies of embassies in
Havana.

The lines there might come to remind us of the Peruvian embassy in 1980,
but not with hoards of desperate people begging for political asylum.
Rather, they will assemble calmly and logically — as it should be — with
people only asking for a visa to travel.

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=70459