Time Magazine poses the right question, "Will the White House Fight to End the Cuba Travel Ban?"
Although not as dramatic and immediately beneficial as Congress ending all restrictions, the answer is tremendously important to US travelers and the industry that serves them.
The Obama Administration must choose soon how much to enable travel to Cuba for non-tourist people to people purposes, which is all it is able to accomplish on its own. It has obligated itself to respond to Cuba's ongoing release of "Black Spring" prisoners. Half of those who were still imprisoned since 2004 have already been freed.
The White House could take a minimalist approach and simply reinstate President Clinton's policy which required time consuming and costly case-by-case applications to the bureaucratic and politicized judgment of the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the Treasury Department (OFAC). Or it could implement its pro-dialogue values and grant general licenses to the remaining eleven categories of non-tourist travel, just as it did for the category of Cuban American family visits more than a year ago.
Under general licenses, travel could be freely organized by schools, cultural institutions, Chambers of Commerce, religious bodies, World Affairs Councils, humanitarian organizations, advocacy groups and other not-for-profit organizations. Tens of thousands of seriously interested Americans can meet their Cuban counterparts and create mutual understanding and trust, needed in both countries.
If, at the same time, the Administration did away with the near monopoly given by OFAC to some 200 licensed Travel Service Providers, tour operators and travel agents nationwide can readily join with local non-profit groups to organize trips.
The Administration should resist pressure from self-interested exiles represented by five Cuban Americans in the House and Senate. Polls demonstrate that they no longer reflect their own community, much less the two-thirds of Americans who support freedom of travel to Cuba. On Saturday they wrote to the President disputing the clear intent of the law which gives him complete authority to allow non-tourist travel.
Last year they opposed even family travel and will denounce any and all reforms, so there is no reason for the White House to be constrained by their misleading statement that they "are deeply troubled that such changes would result in economic benefits to the Cuban regime." At peak in 2003 only 80,000 people-to-people visitors went to Cuba, a drop in the bucket compared to the 2.4 million foreigners in Cuba last year, including 300,000 Cuban Americans.
What really troubles the old guard is that personal contact between diverse Cubans and Americans will puncture their isolationist balloon and contribute to reform in both countries, including the end of all US and Cuban travel and trade restrictions.
Notably absent to date are countervailing opinions from the substantial bipartisan number of Representatives and Senators who support legislation to end all restrictions on travel. They will make their own legislative job easier by visibly applauding the White House initiative and joining Governor Bill Richardson in urging the President to "issue an executive order to lift as much of the travel ban as possible."
John McAuliff is founder and executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development, Dobbs Ferry, NY, a twenty five year old non-governmental organization that worked to normalize US relations with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and now Cuba.
Additional resources:
As a first step to changing our policy toward Cuba, the president should issue an executive order to lift as much of the travel ban as possible. The travel ban penalizes U.S. businesses, lowers our credibility in Latin America and fuels anti-U.S. propaganda. Lifting the ban would also be a reciprocal gesture for Cuba"s recent agreement, negotiated among the Catholic Church, the Spanish government and President Raul Castro, to release political dissidents. Obama has taken significant steps to loosen restrictions on family travel, remove limits for remittance and expand cooperation in other areas such as expanding the export of humanitarian goods from the United States into Cuba. Loosening travel restrictions is in U.S. interests and would be a bold move toward normalization of relations with Cuba.
Washington Post Op Ed by New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson (currently in Cuba)
A new report from the Brookings Institution recommends general licenses, Seizing the Opportunity to Expand People to People Contacts by Dora Beszterczey, Damian F. Fernandez and Andy S. Gomez
Follow John McAuliff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cubaaction
Here's the entire Wikipedia bio on John and his "organization":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fund_for_Reconciliation_and_Development
If you have 15 seconds to peruse it all, give it a look!!!
HP--you guys are starting to really lose it these days.
What's your point?
John, haven't you and others written that most of these prisoners weren't political dissidents at all, but instead, common criminals and paid mercenaries of the U.S.?
Which is it? Illegally imprisoned political dissidents, or falsely accused mercenaries?
The funny thing is, however you answer, both answers stink.
The problem is that the Bush administration tried to make them a political weapon and funded some directly and indirectly and apparently tried to use them to provoke a diplomatic incident that would lead to closure of the Interest Sections. This corrupted and tainted some opponents who became "Dissidents", heroes abroad, marginalized at home.
The Cuban government, which like any other government prefers dissent to stay within the intellectual and political parameters set by its system, targeted opponents who accepted funding from the overtly hostile US. They and the solidarity movement here use the term mercenaries.
Think about what the US did to Japanese during World War II and to members of the Communist Party during the McCarthy era. Think about the attitude about Muslims, surfacing in the rawest terms over the proposed cultural center and prayer room in lower Manhattan.
Countries under threat act in repressive ways. Do politicians use that for their own interests? Always!
Does one change the situation by continuing the threat or by reducing it? Look at Cuba during the later Clinton years vs. the Bush years and draw your own conclusion.
John McAuliff
And John, what exactly is the threat you claim Castro's Cuba lives under? It couldn't possibly be a U.S. invasion, because NO ONE in their right mind can make that claim. However, Castro USES that claim to justify his tyranny.
Finally, as I previously stated, I have a severe problem with your blanket statement on what Cuban ex-pats want regarding U.S. policy. I live in South Florida, and although I never took a formal poll, I sure know what my informal polls say:
Invade, and make Cuba free.
Uhhh--yeah? Exactly what did we do?
Win a war that they started?
You guys are horrible tippers anyway.
You have nothing to worry about:
Cubans themselves can't own anything, so I guess as long as things stay as they are, the place is just okey dokey with you, huh?
Come on--educate yourself a little. PLEASE!!!
Thank you for your concern about my education and rest assured I'll keep trying. I actually spoke to many Cubans in the past six years during my trips (I have a little Spanish), and this is how they explained it to me. Individuals can own a home. It's comparable to a government land lease on which you own the building (they usually build their own homes when they can afford the materials they need). You don't build wooden houses on an island that gets hit by hurricanes. They can pass down this home to the next generation. Anyway, they also explained how professionals (doctors, university professors, lawyers) are provided with free education and free housing for as long as they practice. Also, there's a rotation for tourism workers because they make more money through tips than everybody else. So you only get to do a two year stint in that industry then it's back your usual trade. Some of them want more, some of them don't. I'm not certain from my chats what the percentages are. Cubans don't generally want to talk about it. So that's what I know about it, which admittedly isn't much.
The country simply doesn't pay its debts, and once you understand this simple fact, you will understand that their damage from the U.S. embargo is a total myth, and has been for 50 years.
The Cuban exiles in the US are the only ones benefitting from the trade embargo and travel restrictions to that island. Whatever their objective was/is, the Castro regime is still in power, and there haven't been revolts or major oppositions during the 50+ years we've held our out-dated, hard-lined policies.
Cubans enjoy free high-quality health care and free education (all through college), which we don't here. Many Americans visit Cuba, regardless of restrictions, via Mexico or Canada anyway.
It's time to rethink our trade and travel policies with Cuba. The purpose of Nixon's trip to China was to open their markets and society to the world. Businesses invest there, trade and travel to that country have brought it into the 21st century, and it's now a major global economy. Surely we can do the same with Cuba.
He got a better job with a friend who had a vending machine company, and they did well. And he didn't spend the rest of his life hating Castro. He said Cuba needed big changes and he was sorry it couldn't have been done peacefully. Now that's a real aristocrat.
Do you think your gracious gentleman would have been such an aristocrat had he suffered that fate?
NEVER FORGET THE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF INNOCENTS MURDERED UNDER CHE AND CASTRO! THEY DESERVE JUSTICE!
Okay. You claimed something here. So can you site ONE example of this?
I'm just asking for one good example, and I'm not holding my breath.
http://www.lawg.org/storage/lawg/documents/Cuba/111th%20Travel/ltr%20to%20obama%20about%20full%20travel.pdf
Today three key Congressional supporters of travel sent a very positive letter to President Obama saying, "we want to express our strong support for such changes and encourage you to make the regulations on travel as flexible and broad as existing law allows."
Representatives Jim McGovern, Jo Ann Emerson and Rosa DeLauro also asked him to support HR 4645 to end all travel restrictions.
An easy way to communicate your own views to the White House can be found here http://www.change.org/petitions/view/mr_president_be_bold_on_people_to_people_travel_to_cuba
John McAuliff
Gonna tell them to keep the embargo going!
I didn't know HP was an advocacy site. I thought it was a news site.
Thanks for proving me wrong about that, John. And thank you for the opportunity to prove you wrong about every claim you made here.
Let me guess:
You didn't get paid a dime for this article, correct? And your salary comes from elsewhere, like Habana?
FRD depends completely on foundation grants and private donations, including from the Ford, Luce Rockefeller Foundations and Atlantic Philanthropies. Our only foreign funding came from the Swedish government for a project that brought overseas Cambodian academics and professionals together with Cambodian government ministers before the Paris Peace Agreement and contributed to the establishment of a broader based coalition.
Sorry not to fit your stereotype.
John McAuliff
Pitiful, as is your cause.
Let's all hope President Obama rejects the hateful input from Sen. Robt.Menendez (D-NJ) and the spiteful Miami-Cuban Republican Congresspeople and begins the long-overdue process of freeing us from the shame of having to be licensed to travel, and more sadly, to help the Cuban people.
Hateful and spiteful?
Exactly how did you come to that ridiculous conclusion, based on the tens of thousands of ex-Cubans living in Miami who lost their homes and had family members murdered?
It's pretty interesting how you categorize these people as hateful and spiteful--you, who have suffered and lost nothing in your life.
It would be good for President Obama, America and the World.
The Administration has programmed Presidential Model 2.0 to respond only to pressure from its right side.
It's okay for you to believe the lies, but please--don't perpetuate them:
There's not an iota of evidence that American travel to the island will bring about democracy. As it is, there are DOZENS of places Americans have been free to travel, and the countries are no better off because of it.
I don't know why you think that some fat middle-aged guy from Philadelphia wearing a flowered shirt visiting the Malecon is going to make Castro change his ways.
You have to think this stuff through.