• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 09 / 13 / 2011

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Companies that ferry travelers to Cuba are often targets of those who want to limit travel to the Communist island.

BY MIMI WHITEFIELD.MiamiHerald.com. Ronelvys Gonzalez managed to balance a flat screen TV, a bicycle, baby stroller, playpen and bags of plastic-wrapped clothing on a single luggage cart as he waited to check in for a recent charter flight to Cuba at Miami International Airport.

He lives in Perrine but his wife, 4-month-old son, aunts and other relatives live in Havana. The $2,500 worth of merchandise he had assembled was for them. While he wasn’t too happy about the excess baggage fees he was expecting to pay, his real worry is proposed legislation that would put a crimp in growing travel between the United States and Cuba.

For the air charter companies that ferry passengers to and from Cuba, his dilemma is their dilemma.

They’ve seen their business grow briskly since the Obama administration began allowing Cuban-Americans to make unlimited family visits in 2009. And new rules announced this year will allow a broader range of Americans to travel to Cuba and open up new gateway cities such as Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta that can now handle Cuba travel.

“There is no logical basis for arguing for the restrictions any more on a foreign policy basis,’’ said Bob Guild, vice president of Marazul Charters, which offers service to Cuba from Miami and New York.

Travel to Cuba has long been a polarizing issue in the Cuban-American community, and the handful of companies that have been handling charters to the island have been a magnet for lawsuits — and laws that would limit travel to Cuba — for most of their existence.

The latest proposals to crack down on travel come from South Florida Republican Congressmen Mario-Diaz Balart and David Rivera. They have proposed separate bills that would roll back regulations on travel to Cuba to the more restrictive policies of former President George W. Bush.

Those rules limited family visits by Cuban-Americans to once every three years, only allowed visits to members of the immediate family — not aunts, uncles and cousins, and set a ceiling on remittances of $1,200 a year.

If the legislation becomes law, “it would mean I won’t be able to see my son grow up,’’ said Gonzalez as he waited to check his baggage. “I could only see my child once every three years.’’

Rivera’s bill also would stop people-to-people trips that allow travel by a wider range of Americans if they take tours designed to foster exchanges with ordinary Cubans.

The congressman, who began his fight to limit travel to Cuba when he was a state legislator, insists that travel throws an economic life line to the Castro government.

He also has filed a separate bill, now in the Judiciary Committee, that makes exiles ineligible for the Cuban Adjustment Act if they return to Cuba before they become U.S. citizens — a process that generally takes five years.

The 1966 law was designed to provide a path to residency and citizenship for Cubans who couldn’t return to the island because of political persecution. Now those who apply can have their status adjusted after a year in the United States, obtaining residency and becoming eligible for Medicaid, Medicare, welfare and other benefits.

Under Rivera’s proposal, he said, “you can’t travel back or you lose your residency.’’ People who come here and apply for the Cuban Adjustment Act, claiming persecution, and then immediately want to go back and forth are abusing the system, he said.

 Rivera’s bill is “mean-spirited,’’ said Vivian Mannerud, chief executive and founder of Coral Gables-based Airline Brokers. “They can’t stop travelers any other way, so they want to scare them.’’

But Rivera said he has heard from many constituents who are fed up “with the abuse and manipulation of existing laws.’’ He said his desire to cut back on Cuban-American travel is also motivated by stopping those who are abusing the concept of family reunification.

“Many people in the community have recounted instances of travel for purposes other than family reunification, such as attending parties or engaging in black market commercial activity,’’ he said.

Anecdotally, Cuban-Americans talk about friends and neighbors who have gone to the island for beach vacations, relatively inexpensive plastic surgery, or to participate in Santeria rituals. And there are travelers whose cartloads of merchandise are intended to sell on the streets of Havana rather than for family gifts.

Judith Iglesias, a customer service clerk from Kendall who expects to visit her family in Santa Clara this month, said she knows that some people abuse the system with frequent travel that has nothing to do with bringing a family together. “That’s not the case of my family,’’ she said.

It takes time to accumulate products such as clothing, vitamins, adult diapers and the dietary supplements Iglesias takes to her 92-year-old grandmother, she explained. “We have to save month by month. Everybody needs something.’’

Iglesias, who arrived in the United States in 1997, said she wanted to make one thing very clear: “I don’t want them to take these trips away.’’

The charter operators point to the numbers of travelers as a reflection of the true sentiment of the community. Last year, some 320,000 travelers departed from MIA and charter operators estimate the number will top 400,000 this year.

“Cuban-Americans are voting with their feet,’ said Xiomara Almaguer-Levy, who heads Xael Charters. “It’s like a referendum on the issue.”

After Diaz-Balart introduced his bill, Tessie Aral, president of ABC Charters and a resident of Diaz-Balart’s district, began collecting signatures for a petition requesting a town hall meeting.

“We wanted him to explain to his constituents why this was good for them,’’ Aral said.

The next time she was in Washington she went to Diaz-Balart’s office to present the petition, which had about 1,500 signatures, but was rebuffed. A staffer presented her with an email that said: “The office has a policy of not meeting with individuals or entities that conduct business with totalitarian regimes.”

“Do they meet with American Airlines, JetBlue, the Catholic Archdiocese, Crowley, Cargill, Perdue chicken?” Aral asked. (American Airlines and JetBlue lease aircraft to the charter companies, and U.S. commercial airlines pay fees to Cuba when they fly over the island en route to Latin America and the Caribbean. Crowley Maritime, Cargill and Perdue have done business with Cuba under exceptions to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.)

“[The charter companies] are an easier target, maybe,’’ said Ira Kurzban, a Miami attorney who has represented several of the companies.

Source: //www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/11/2402379_p2/