Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

T&T’s For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne and re­gion­al col­leagues from Cari­com’s Coun­cil for For­eign and Com­mu­ni­ty Re­la­tions (Cof­cor) will meet on Sun­day with US State De­part­ment spe­cial en­voy for Latin Amer­i­ca, Mauri­cio Clavre-Carone, on the re­cent­ly an­nounced ex­pand­ed US-Cu­ba visa re­stric­tion pol­i­cy.

Browne con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day when asked about the meet­ing, which he said was be­ing arranged be­tween Cof­cor of­fi­cials and the US ad­min­is­tra­tion.

US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio’s Feb­ru­ary 25 an­nounce­ment of the pol­i­cy raised con­cern among Caribbean states, many of whom par­tic­i­pate in the Cuban med­ical mis­sion pro­gramme.

The ex­pand­ed pol­i­cy ap­plies to cur­rent and for­mer Cuban gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, and oth­er in­di­vid­u­als, be­lieved to be re­spon­si­ble for, or in­volved in, the Cuban labour ex­port pro­gramme, “par­tic­u­lar­ly Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions.” Ru­bio de­scribed Cu­ba’s over­seas med­ical mis­sions as an op­pres­sive pro­gramme that en­rich­es the Cuban gov­ern­ment and de­prives Cubans of op­ti­mum health­care.

Yes­ter­day, Browne said Cof­cor mem­bers will meet Spe­cial En­voy Claver-Carone in Wash­ing­ton DC from to­mor­row un­til Tues­day for a spe­cial Gen­er­al As­sem­bly of the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Amer­i­can States (OAS).

The OAS’ spe­cial Gen­er­al As­sem­bly meet­ing will be held on Mon­day to elect an OAS Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, who will lead the hemi­spher­ic or­gan­i­sa­tion from 2025-2030.

Lead­ing up to Sun­day’s meet­ing, re­gion­al lead­ers ex­pressed con­cern about the ex­pect­ed ad­verse ef­fects of the US/Cuban visa re­stric­tion.

On Wednes­day, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves, dur­ing a ra­dio show, warned of the po­ten­tial reper­cus­sions for Caribbean health­care if the US pro­ceeds with sanc­tions tar­get­ing na­tions that par­tic­i­pate in Cuban med­ical mis­sions - par­tic­u­lar­ly coun­tries like St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, which re­ly heav­i­ly on Cuban med­ical pro­fes­sion­als.

He said its ab­sence would se­vere­ly im­pact health ser­vices in the re­gion, caus­ing in­creased mor­tal­i­ty. Gon­salves was quot­ed say­ing, “If you’re to cut that off, a lot of health ser­vices in the Caribbean would suf­fer great­ly, and a lot of peo­ple would die. Guyana and Ja­maica, I be­lieve are the largest ones but cer­tain­ly the OECS coun­tries too.”