The Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Cu­ba is re­open­ing visa and con­sular ser­vices Wednes­day, the first time it has done so since a spate of un­ex­plained health in­ci­dents among diplo­mat­ic staff in 2017 slashed the Amer­i­can pres­ence in Ha­vana.

The Em­bassy con­firmed this week it will be­gin pro­cess­ing im­mi­grant visas, with a pri­or­i­ty placed on per­mits to re­unite Cubans with fam­i­ly in the U.S., and oth­ers like the di­ver­si­ty visa lot­tery.

The re­sump­tion comes amid the great­est mi­gra­to­ry flight from Cu­ba in decades, which has placed pres­sure on the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion to open more le­gal path­ways to Cubans and start a di­a­logue with the Cuban gov­ern­ment, de­spite a his­tor­i­cal­ly tense re­la­tion­ship.

They are an­tic­i­pat­ed to give out at least 20,000 visas a year, though it’s just a drop in the buck­et of the mi­gra­to­ry tide, which is fu­eled by in­ten­si­fy­ing eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal crises on the is­land.

In late De­cem­ber, U.S. au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed stop­ping Cubans 34,675 times along the Mex­i­co bor­der in No­vem­ber, up 21% from 28,848 times in Oc­to­ber.

Month-to-month, that num­ber has grad­u­al­ly risen. Cubans are now the sec­ond-largest na­tion­al­i­ty af­ter Mex­i­cans ap­pear­ing on the bor­der, U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion da­ta shows.

The grow­ing mi­gra­tion is due to a com­plex ar­ray of fac­tors, in­clud­ing eco­nom­ic, en­er­gy and po­lit­i­cal crises, as well deep dis­con­tent among Cubans.

While the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Cuban mi­grants head to the U.S. via flights to Nicaragua and cross by land at the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co, thou­sands more have al­so tak­en a dan­ger­ous voy­age by sea. They trav­el 90 miles to the Flori­da coast, of­ten ar­riv­ing in rick­ety, pre­car­i­ous­ly con­struct­ed boats packed with mi­grants.

The ex­o­dus from Cu­ba is al­so com­pound­ed by ris­ing mi­gra­tion to the U.S. from oth­er coun­tries like Haiti and Venezuela, forc­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment to grap­ple with a grow­ing­ly com­plex sit­u­a­tion on its south­ern bor­der.

The re­new­al of visa work at the em­bassy comes af­ter a se­ries of mi­gra­tion talks and vis­its by U.S. of­fi­cials to Ha­vana in re­cent months, and may al­so be the sign of a slow thaw­ing be­tween the two gov­ern­ments.

“En­gag­ing in these talks un­der­scores our com­mit­ment to pur­su­ing con­struc­tive dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment of Cu­ba where ap­pro­pri­ate to ad­vance U.S. in­ter­ests,” the U.S. Em­bassy said in a state­ment in No­vem­ber fol­low­ing an Amer­i­can del­e­ga­tion’s vis­it to Cu­ba.

The small steps are far cry from re­la­tions un­der Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, who eased many Amer­i­can Cold War-era sanc­tions dur­ing his time in of­fice and made a his­toric vis­it to the is­land in 2016.

Visa and con­sular ser­vices were closed on the is­land in 2017 af­ter em­bassy staff were affflict­ed in a se­ries of health in­ci­dents, al­leged son­ic at­tacks that re­main large­ly un­ex­plained.

As a re­sult, many Cubans who want­ed to legal­ly mi­grate to the U.S. have had to fly to places like Guyana to do so be­fore mi­grat­ing or re­unit­ing with fam­i­ly.

While re­la­tions have al­ways been tense be­tween Cu­ba and the U.S., they were height­ened fol­low­ing the em­bassy clo­sure and the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s tight­en­ing of sanc­tions on Cu­ba.

Un­der Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, the U.S. has eased some re­stric­tions on things like re­mit­tances and fam­i­ly trav­el from Mi­a­mi to Cu­ba, but has fall­en short of hopes by many in Cu­ba that a Biden pres­i­den­cy would re­turn the is­land to its “Oba­ma era.”

Re­stric­tions on tourist trav­el to Cu­ba, and im­ports and ex­ports of many goods, re­main in place.

Al­so kin­dling ten­sions has been the Cuban gov­ern­ment’s harsh treat­ment of par­tic­i­pants in the is­land’s 2021 protests, in­clud­ing hefty prison sen­tences doled out to mi­nors, a con­stant point of crit­i­cism by the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Cuban of­fi­cials have re­peat­ed­ly ex­pressed op­ti­mism about talks with the U.S. and steps to re­open visa ser­vices. Cuban Deputy For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Car­los Cos­sio said in No­vem­ber that en­sur­ing mi­gra­tion through safe and le­gal path­ways is a “mu­tu­al ob­jec­tive” by both coun­tries.

But Cos­sio al­so blamed the flight of tens of thou­sands from the is­land on U.S. sanc­tions, say­ing that “there’s no doubt that a pol­i­cy meant to de­press the liv­ing stan­dards of a pop­u­la­tion is a di­rect dri­ver of mi­gra­tion.”

HA­VANA (AP)