PM Briceño to Address Influx of Cuban Migrants with Cuban President

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez is scheduled to arrive in Belize on Sunday, February 12. This visit is one of historical importance as it will mark the first time that a leader of the communist island country will be visiting the country. In honour of his visit, there will be a special sitting of the National Assembly. Prime Minister, John Briceño, says there will also be a bilateral meeting between the two leaders where they will be able to discuss myriad topics of importance, including the high influx of Cuban migrants entering Belize to gain access to the United States.

Hon. John Briceño, Prime Minister of Belize: “Well certainly we’re quite excited to have the President of Cuba to visit Belize. As you know Belize has had a very close relationship with Cuba. Cuba through Fidel Castro in the 70’s was among one of the first countries that felt that they need to support Belize’s quest for independence he worked very closely with George Price and it is through his efforts and Omar Torrijos from Panama that we managed to break that Latin American grip with support for Guatemala so it is something that you can never forget and we’ll always be grateful. We have the issues with the Cuban Brigade, the scholarship, there’s so much that we are very thankful to Cuba so that the president for the first time a Cuban president coming to Belize is indeed a big thing. It’s for us it’s very exciting it’s unfortunate that he could only be here for a short while but we will be having different discussions with them. Certainly immigration is one of them, the issue of education, the issue of health all of these matters are very important to both countries and we do plan to have discuss some of these items. We plan to have an MOU at the end the discussion and then we will have a joint meeting of parliament, the Senate and the National Assembly, so that then the President can address us.”