Bipartisan
Support Surges to End Cuba Travel Ban
Katrin
Dauenhauer
WASHINGTON, (IPS) - A growing number of
U.S. legislators, human rights groups
and influential Cuban-Americans are
calling for an end to the ban on travel
to Cuba, with a new amendment set to be
introduced in Congress by September.
”Whenever it comes up, we're in a good
position,” said Jeff Flake, an Arizona
republican and sponsor of the Export
Freedom to Cuba Act of 2003 in the
House, which would halt enforcement of
the travel ban. ”We're in the right
position to win.”
Last year, the House of Representatives
voted 262-167 in favour of lifting the
four-decade-old travel ban to the
socialist island, but the effort died
after the Senate failed to pass similar
legislation.
This year, identical bills will be
introduced in both the House and the
Senate -- this time supported by a
growing number of Congressmen, human
rights groups and a younger generation
of Cuban-Americans.
Some 59 House members and 23 senators --
of both parties -- are co-sponsoring
legislation that would allow travel
between the United States and Cuba. The
bills are currently under review in the
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
and the House Committee on International
Relations.
”Travel to Cuba is ultimately an issue
of freedom,” said Flake. ”We oppose
the recent crackdown in Cuba, but the
imposed travel ban is a failed policy.
We have to get tough on Cuba by
introducing U.S. values. We have to
export freedom to Cuba.”
Flake and others pressed their case at a
forum last week sponsored by the Center
for International Policy, the Lexington
Institute, USA Engage, and the
Association of Travel-Related Industry
Professionals.
Recent polls also show a changing
attitude among Cuban-Americans towards
U.S. foreign policy on Cuba. A poll
aimed at gauging Cuban-American views on
a range of topics conducted by Hamilton
Beattie & Staff in Miami last month
found that a clear majority of
Cuban-Americans -- but particularly
those under age 45 -- care more about
the quality of life in South Florida
than about whether Fidel Castro is
overthrown.
The results also seem to bolster a
central finding of a separate poll that
reflected a shift away from hard-line
positions among a majority of
Cuban-Americans in South Florida.
Earlier this year, a Miami Herald poll
found that more than half of the area's
Cubans support dialogue between exiles
and Cuban government officials -- a
position endorsed by only 20 percent of
Cuban Americans a decade ago.
”I believe the poll clearly
demonstrates a changing agenda in our
South Florida Cuban community,” said
Alvaro Ferandez, Florida director of the
Southwest Voter Registration Education
Project (SVREP). ”When you consider
responses to the local versus
international issue, along with
self-determination of Cubans in Cuba,
and the future possibility of retirement
on the island, then I would say that
this area is definitely turning the
corner on the Cuba issue. And these
changes are highlighted even more when
taking into account age, income level,
and educational level of the
respondents.”
Although the hard-liners' position may
be eroding, most Cuban-Americans still
say they would not back a political
candidate who advocates unrestricted
trade, travel and investments on the
island.
Critics of the travel ban say the George
W. Bush administration's unrelenting
stance towards Cuba is motivated by
domestic politics, particularly next
year's presidential elections.
”The Cuba travel ban is solely based
on domestic policy considerations. With
the presidential election coming up,
about 40 influential hard-line
Cuban-Americans in the White House and
the knowledge that the state of Florida
had been crucial to win the last
election, Pres. Bush tries to win votes
by tightening restrictions to travel to
Cuba,” a spokesperson for the
Interreligious Foundation for Community
Organisation (IFCO), which sponsors an
annual caravan of humanitarian aid to
Cuba, told IPS.
Since Bush took office, more than 1,200
Americans have received threatening
letters from the Office of Foreign
Assets Control (OFAC) for traveling to
Cuba. OFAC may impose fines of up to the
maximum of 55,000 dollars for violating
the travel ban by spending money in Cuba
without a licence.
In another move to further tighten
restrictions, OFAC announced the
elimination of ”people to people”
educational exchange licenses in March
of this year, the second largest
category of U.S. citizens legally
traveling to Cuba.
”This is a goofball policy,” said
Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota
democrat and co-sponsor of the Freedom
to Travel to Cuba Act of 2003. ”OFAC's
task should be to track financial
information to find terrorists. Instead
the office spends money on tracking U.S.
tourists. This law makes no sense at all
and injures the American people. It's
just dumb.”
While support for easing travel
restrictions is growing in Congress,
Pres. Bush still firmly rejects any
policy that would ease the embargo, and
has vowed to block any such effort. In
1996, the Helms Burton Act tightened and
codified travel restrictions, giving
only Congress the power to eliminate
them.
Some 200,000 U.S. citizens ventured to
Cuba last year, about 160,000 legally
under licenses issued by the Office of
Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury
Department, and around 40,000 without
permission from the government.
”A policy of allowing Americans to
travel freely to Cuba would do more to
encourage the cause of reform in that
country than the current misguided
policy of isolation,” said Jose Miguel
Vivanco, executive director of the
Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.
Meanwhile, in a yearly ritual organised
by IFCO/Pastors for Peace, hundreds of
volunteers from across the United
States, Mexico and Canada arrived in
Havana over the weekend with 80 tonnes
of humanitarian aid.
Defying the U.S. embargo, participants
refused to obtain licences for their
stay, citing their right to freedom of
travel under the U.S. Constitution, as
well as an obligation to challenge the
”immoral laws designated to create
pain and suffering for innocent Cuban
citizens.”
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