The Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, said she does not mind if her support for the Cuban health program results in the revocation of her United States (US) visa.
Mottley in a statement in parliament also encouraged the Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries to put in measures that will enable them explain “what the Cubans have been able to do for us” in their efforts to support the Cuban health brigade program, Jamaica Observer reported.
“This matter, with the Cubans and the nurses, should tell us everything that we need to know. Barbados does not currently have Cuban medical staff or Cuban nurses, but I will be the first to go to the line and to tell you that we could not get through the (COVID-19) pandemic without the Cuban nurses and the Cuban doctors,” Mottley said.
RELATED STORIES
Relations between the United States and Cuba have been hostile for decades. And though Caricom countries are adamant the program has been largely helpful, the US has cast doubts about it.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a February statement announced the Trump administration was expanding “an existing Cuba-related visa restriction policy that targets forced labor linked to the Cuban labor export program.”
“This expanded policy applies to current or former Cuban government officials, and other individuals, including foreign government officials, who are believed to be responsible for, or involved in, the Cuban labor export program, particularly Cuba’s overseas medical missions,” Rubio, who was born to Cuban immigrants, said.
READ ALSO: 6 key Afro-Cubans who fought during Cuba’s liberation struggle
“This policy also applies to the immediate family of such persons. The Department has already taken steps to impose visa restrictions on several individuals, including Venezuelans, under this expanded policy.”
He added: “Cuba continues to profit from the forced labor of its workers and the regime’s abusive and coercive labor practices are well documented. Cuba’s labor export 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.”
Besides Mottley, the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Trinidad and Tobago have openly thrown their weights behind the Cuban program, Jamaica Observer reported.
Mottley in her statement said that she wants the world to know that monies paid to Cuban health professionals are the same they “pay Bajans (Barbadians), and that the notion, as was peddled not just by this government in the US, but the previous government, that we were involved in human trafficking by engaging with the Cuban nurses was fully repudiated and rejected by us.”
She added: “Now, I don’t believe that we have to shout across the seas, but I am prepared, like others in this region, that if we cannot reach a sensible agreement on this matter, then if the cost of it is the loss of my visa, to the US, then so be it.
“But what matters to us is principles. And I have said over and over that principles only mean something when it is inconvenient to stand by it. Now we don’t have to shout, but we can be resolute.”
Mottley also said that she will stand with her “Caricom brothers…to be able to ensure that we explain that what the Cubans have been able to do for us, far from approximating itself to human trafficking, has been to save lives and limbs and sight for many a Caribbean person.”
