2024-02-15 18:29:28
The migration crisis worsened in 2023, when more than 300 thousand Cubans, tired of so much apathy and misery, left the island in search of international protection.
According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 319,000 Cubans requested asylum in 49 countries during that year.
Added to this figure are 15,981 Cubans who already had refugee status under the UNHCR mandate. In total, 335,151 of these people sought refuge in the world, which is equivalent to four times the resident population in the Isla de la Juventud special municipality in 2022.
The main destination for Antilleans was the United States, which received 241,553 refugee applications in 2023.
Many of them arrived through Mexico, which registered 24,957 asylum requests from Cubans. Others transited irregularly through Honduras, where immigration authorities counted 85,969 inhabitants of the island with the intention of reaching the United States. The migrants were mostly adult men of working age.
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The flow of Cuban migrants in transit increased considerably in 2023, following an upward trend since 2020.
The increase coincided with the visa exemption for Cubans to enter Nicaragua. The behavior was similar to that recorded by Mexico and the United States.
Latin America and the Caribbean were the regions that received the most refugee requests from Cubans, after the United States.
Among other factors, geographical proximity and possible cultural similarities influenced the choice of these destinations. A total of 41,613 migrants requested asylum in 13 countries in the region: Uruguay, Brazil, Costa Rica, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic.
The European Union was the third region with the highest number of asylum requests from Cubans, with 5,631 requests.
On this occasion, the most requested countries were Spain, Italy, Germany, France and Greece. There were also rare destinations that welcomed Cuban refugees during 2023, such as Croatia, Montenegro, Armenia, Norway and Serbia.
Possibly, the number will continue to grow in 2024, all motivated by the nightmare caused by the regime in the largest of the Antilles; a nightmare that the inhabitants can no longer tolerate.
Editorial of Cubans around the World