President Obama to Loosen Restrictions on Policy With Cuba
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- 04 / 05 / 2009
The House and Senate are considering legislation that would go even further than the administration and allow all Americans unlimited travel to Cuba.
While precise details of the plan are still being worked out, Mr. Obama is not expected to call for the lifting of the trade embargo on Cuba, which would require Congressional approval, the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the policy change has not been formally announced.
Cuba analysts said Friday that they did not expect any new diplomatic initiatives toward the island nation. “It’s a humanitarian step, but it doesn’t get at the root of our foreign policy problem with Cuba because we don’t have full contact,” said Philip Peters, a Cuba specialist and vice president at the Lexington Institute, a policy research center.
Cuban-Americans are now permitted to travel once a year to the island to visit close relatives. The Treasury Department also issues licenses to travel to Cuba for specific purposes, including academic research.
During the presidential campaign, aides to Mr. Obama called President George W. Bush’s policy toward Cuba a “humanitarian and strategic blunder.” Mr. Obama promised changes, including a lifting of all travel restrictions for those with relatives in Cuba and an end to limits on the money Americans could send their families on the island.
“I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island,” Mr. Obama said in Miami on May 23. “It’s time to let Cuban-Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It’s time to let Cuban-American money make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime.”
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. also signaled the change last week on a trip to Costa Rica and Chile. “Over the next decade and sooner there is likely to be, and needs to be, changes in the relationship between Cuba and the United States,” he said.
The decision to lift the ban on family travel and remittances was first reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Web site Friday.
Support for such changes has been growing in the United States and across Latin America. A new generation of Cuban-American leaders have rejected hard-line positions in favor of greater engagement. Latin American leaders have expressed almost unanimous support for an end to the United States trade embargo, which dates from the early 1960s.
Raúl Castro, who succeeded his ailing older brother, Fidel, became president of Cuba over a year ago. He has made some changes, including loosening rules that prohibit most Cubans from buying cellphones, but Cubans have complained that he has done little to improve the quality of their daily lives.
In Miami, reaction to the Obama administration’s plan reflected both the decades-old approach to Cuba policy and its evolution more recently as younger Cubans have diluted the hard-line stance of their elders.
Several polls of Cuban-Americans taken in the past two years, by Florida International University among others, have shown an increased demand for some form of engagement with Cuba, and declining support for restrictions on travel and remittance.
Andy S. Gomez, a supporter of lifting the family travel ban and a senior fellow at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, said the decision to loosen travel and remittance restrictions was “a positive first step” that would put pressure on the Cuban government to respond.
“There is a change in the mentality of the Cuban-American community,” he said. “At the same time, the Cuban-American community doesn’t want to give up everything for nothing in return.”
(NYTimes)
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