Ecuador to Require Visas for Cubans to Stem Irregular Migration

The Cubans waved their passports and plane tickets and said they were angry because they had already bought tickets under the previous no-visa policy of Ecuador and wanted passage or their money back.

Irate Cubans protested outside airline offices and at the Ecuadoran Embassy Friday, a day after Ecuador announced new visa requirements for Cuban travelers in an attempt to cut off what has become a popular, if circuitous, migration route to the United States.

He said more than 40,000 Cubans had entered Ecuador since the country stopped requiring visas in 2008. Most Cubans have nearly no internet access.

Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. He added that the meeting focused on finding an immediate and also an integral solution to the flow and gathering of Cuban migrants in Costa Rica.

“I don’t see it as protection, we don’t all want to go to the United States”. The move has created a humanitarian and political crisis on Costa Rica’s northern border, where more than 3,000 Cubans are stuck in migratory limbo.

Fearing the recent rapprochement between Havana and Washington could end preferential U.S. policies for Cuban migrants, thousands of people from the Communist-ruled island have been crossing into South America and traveling through Central America hoping to reach USA soil.

“I used to fly to Ecuador several times a year to buy clothes to sell in Cuba”.

Ecuador stated it made the choice at a regional assembly on Tuesday in El Salvador to debate the way forward for hundreds of Cubans stranded on the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border en path to america. It does not block Cubans from coming but will require them to obtain visas beforehand.

About the new visa requirement, she said it is a “circumstantial situation” for which they have implemented a “special strategy for Cuba”, which requires all interested parties to register their data on the embassy Web site in a “simplified” procedure to speed up the application process. “We are supposed to receive instructions on Monday”, said a Tame office worker in Havana who declined to give her name.