• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 08 / 08 / 2011

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Sunday, August 07, 2011. HAVANA, Cuba (CMC) – The Cuban government is working to relax migration policies on Cubans abroad who want to travel back to the island and those at home who want to travel abroad, Cuban president Raúl Castro has said.

Castro’s comments to parliament, reported in the state news media, have sparked interest among nationals who have long demanded the right to travel abroad without the need for obtaining a government “exit permit”.

Castro said his administration “is making advances with the reform and elaboration of a series of regulations” on migration that have lasted “unnecessarily” for a long time.

“We take this step as a contribution to the increase in links between the nation and the émigré community, whose makeup has changed radically since the first decades of the revolution,” he said.

“In their overwhelming majority, Cubans today emigrate because of economic reasons, and almost all of them preserve their love for family and country,” he added.

The number of Cubans living abroad range from 67,000 to 200,000, including “rafters” or others who left the island illegally.

Cubans now can leave the island only with an exit permit known as a white card, good for a maximum of 30 days and issued only after a security check.

Permits are seldom granted to such government critics as blogger Yoani Sanchez and dissident Guillermo Fariñas.

A Communist Party Congress in April proposed a study of the possibility of allowing Cubans to make “tourist trips” abroad.

The gathering of the legislative National Assembly of Peoples’ Power was held behind closed doors, but the official Prensa Latina and National Information Agency (AIN) as well as the state television and radio reported on parts of the proceedings.

The reports noted that the Assembly quickly endorsed Castro’s bold proposals for reforms of the economy, hamstrung by centralized planning and controls, corruption and a massive bureaucracy.

The Assembly usually meets only twice a year for sessions of three to four days — unlike last week’s Assembly, which lasted just one day.

Castro also told lawmakers that the island’s economy had grown by 1.9 per cent in the first six months of this year and would hit 2.9 per cent by the end of 2011.

During the first half of the year, imports dropped and exports grew as the economy recorded increases in oil, nickel production and “energy efficiency,” and the numbers of tourists arriving on the island, and sugar production stopped falling, Castro told lawmakers.

But he said there were shortfalls in farming, food and construction industries, as well as heavy and light industries.

Source: //www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Cuba--working-to-ease-migration-regulations