Tema: Lift the Cuba Embargo?

Cubans vote with their feet when they escape from Dr. Castro’s island paradise. There are 1.7 millions Cuban-Americans living in the US, and 600,000 Cubans in the rest of the world, for a total of 2.3 millions. The actual population in Cuba is 11.4 millions. The 2.3 millions living abroad represent 20% of the population in the island.

That`s just those who were able to leave the island. It doesn't mean that those who stayed behind are happy with their situation.

Persons of Cuban origin who are nationals of other countries need a Cuban passport to travel to the island. The regimen does not recognize dual citizenship. They have to solicit, through a non refundable pre-pay petition, permission to return to the country of their birth. The permission stamp in the passport is valid for 21 days only. The Cuban passport need be renewed every two years at a cost of $100 dollars. This has a double purpose, to generate revenue and screen who are not allow to enter the country.

Iniciado por Hyeronimus

That`s just those who were able to leave the island. It doesn't mean that those who stayed behind are happy with their situation.

Hundreds of Cubans line up to become Spaniardshttp://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/828409.h...

Estimates indicate that some 200,000 Cubans on the island could be eligible for Spanish citizenship. There are over 800,000 Cubans on the U.S. visa lottery waiting list

The (Non) Right of Cubans to Travel
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=18972

Haroldo Dilla Alfonso

HAVANA TIMES, Feb. 1 — A while ago, Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarconwas asked whether Cubans should be entitled the right to travel freely. This prominent member of the island’s political elite responded —in the finest style of standup comedy— saying that if this right existed, the sky would become so filled with airplanes that some would collide with others, causing great a disaster. In my opinion, the greater disaster was this official’s response.

This statement was probably no more disastrous than what was later said by the president of the Cuban National Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), writer Miguel Barnet. He affirmed that in Cuba there exists complete freedom to travel, citing as an example the fact that he himself has traveled to thirty countries. As I suspect he hopes to continue traveling, Barnet knows he must walk a thin line, otherwise he risks discrediting himself and seeing the end of his journeys.

Such collusion extends to a good part of the Cuban intellectual camp, including many “progressives” and “reformists” whose critical poses are so well-liked by foreign correspondents here in Havana.

A few weeks ago, a distinguished Cuban intellectual who resides in New York wrote to me disappointed by a well-known and active “verbal reformist” —a comrade of days gone by— who spent several minutes at a forum in Pittsburgh explaining that the only obstacle that his fellow Cubans face in traveling is obtaining a visa from the destination country.

Sometimes this matter is not mentioned so directly in self-rewarding displays of immodesty, as those of Barnet and the old friend; rather, they divert their sights, focusing insistently on the US side without distinguishing anything else around them. It’s as if an epidemic of political pigmentary retinopathy has broken out on the island.

The Castro brothers’ regime systematically denies the right of Cubans to travel freely. This is only one of many rights denied to them. Cubans can’t legally leave or reenter the country without regime authorization. Cubans who apply to emigrate lose their belongings and homes. Those who fail to escape illegally are sent to prison.

The regime also bars travel to punish relatives of Cubans who have left the island against government wishes. Cuba uses travel policy as a weapon to deter people from fleeing, prevent family reunification and drive a wedge between Cubans who stay and those in exile.

The fact is that Cuban escaping socialist poverty tends to make them appreciate the freedoms abroad and motivated to take advantage of it. Cubans escapees show the world that Castro regime made Cuba a hell hole when so many people want out. Keep in mind that the regime sells Cuba as a country of justice and equality around the world. So, all these escapees proves the regime wrong because after all, actions speak louder than words.

When I turn the TV or radio on, I have access to hundreds of channels and stations all around the world. I can surf the Internet without my provider banning access to any site, not even a Cuban site. My passport allows me to go anytime anywhere without being asked to return in 11 months.

For those non Cuban that share the idea that the Cuban can leave the country freely, I can assure that everything writing in the article is the real truth. How in the world can be compare the status of the US citizen that cant visit Cuba and the Cuban that need the government permit to go any were in the word (and pay for that permit, the “white card”). Once the people leave the country is when they really realize the freedom to travel.

Cuba remains one of the very few countries in the World where it’s Citizens must obtain, and pay for, a permit to re-enter his/her own country. This is a type of totalitarian control and a good source of revenue as well for the regime.

Visions of a post-embargo Cuba
http://babalublog.com/2010/02/a-post-embargo-cuba/

By Henry Louis Gomez, on February 25, 2010, at 10:38 am
It seems that the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba is the constant thread of the narrative here at Babalu Blog and wherever the issue of Cuba and its dictatorship is discussed. It feels like every day someone new comes along and says, “well it hasn’t worked in fifty years so isn’t time to try something new?” The purpose of this post is not to discuss the origins or intent of the embargo, we’ve discussed that ad nauseam, but rather to look into our crystal ball and see what a post-embargo Cuba would look like without the regime first making any significant changes to its economic and political systems. In other words, giving the castro brothers exactly what they have been asking for since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Tourism

The first implication of lifting the embargo is that Cuba will be legally open to U.S. tourists for the first time in half a century. Now it’s interesting to ponder the fact that the castro regime’s creation myth begins with Cuba as a tourist playground for wealthy Americans who frolicked on Cuba’s beaches and gambled at tables of Cuba’s casinos while a dictator oppressed the Cuban people during the 1950s. Certainly it was not U.S. tourists that “liberated” Cuba from Batista. But now somehow American tourists possess some magical power to bring about change, at least that’s what embargo opponents would have you believe.

One thing that constitution expressly mentions about the power of the federal government, it's in the arena of regulating trade. The way the embargo has been structured, it's a trade policy; it is about spending dollars in a foreign country. There are many ways a US citizen can visit Cuba. What's restricted is spending money there as a tourist. There's a reason why people who travel to Cuba legally have to get a license from OFAC (the office of foreign asset control) which is part of the treasury department. The embargo exists because of the Castro brothers expropriation of American assets.

The calls for lifting the embargo are coming from all angles and all sides, most of them with the standard syndicated filler language used by the regime in Cuba.

Lifting the embargo will most certainly lead to allowing Cuba credit for its purchases, specifically from agricultural states where farms and other agricultural businesses are heavily subsidized by the US tax payer. When the regime defaults on those credits, the responsibility for repayment will fall upon the American tax payer.

The approval of credits to the Castro brothers’ regime by the United States would only replace the Soviet subsidy that they no longer receives, and will delay the transition of the Cuban people towards democracy guaranteeing additional decades of oppression and misery. Castro brothers’ tyranny looks forward to the day when the military apparatus and the massive repressive security service will be maintained at the expense of the United States government.

Mauricio Claver-Carone article stick to the facts to debunk the supporters of loosening the travel bank.

Truth about the travel ban
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/04/1512173/truth-about-the-travel-ban.html

By Mauricio Claver-Carone
www.uscubapac.com

Every day there seems to be a new effort to lift U.S. sanctions toward Cuba, in particular the ``travel ban.'' The latest is a bill by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Colin Peterson, of Minnesota, and U.S. Rep. Jerry Moran, of Kansas, supposedly aimed at increasing agricultural sales to the Castro regime. But its most dramatic provision would end the ``travel ban.''

Tragically, the Peterson-Moran bill was introduced on the same day that 42-year-old Cuban pro-democracy leader and Amnesty International ``prisoner of conscience'' Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after an almost three-months'-long hunger strike protesting the brutal beatings, abuses and prison conditions he endured.
While supporters of loosening the travel ban make bold predictions and philosophical arguments, few stick to the facts. Consider:

• There is no ban on travel to Cuba -- only a ban on taking an exotic vacation there. The Department of Treasury's responsibility, under the trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA), is to prohibit or regulate commercial ``transactions'' related to travel, not travel per se.

Travel to Cuba is authorized for a variety of reasons, ranging from academic, religious and family visits to visits in support of civil society. Tens of thousands of Americans legally travel to Cuba for these purposes every year.

• Tourism is the main source of income for the Castro regime. Cuba's tourism industry is operated and owned by the Cuban military, the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR).

A November-December 2009 article in the U.S. Army's Military Review magazine titled, Revolutionary management, makes the point that Cuba's ``Revolutionary Armed Forces transformed itself to one of the most entrepreneurial, corporate conglomerates in the Americas.''

Cuba is one of the world's last remaining totalitarian, command-control economies, alongside North Korea.

Just as the U.S. Congress recently approved sanctions on Iran's petroleum-refining capability, which is that country's foremost source of income, the United States has long imposed sanctions against tourism transactions in Cuba to prevent an exponential increase in funds for the Castro regime's repressive machinery.

Last November's military exercises by the MINFAR in Cuba were financed by the hard currency of Canadian and European tourists. The real purpose of those exercises wasn't, as the Cuban government stated, to prepare against an ``ever-looming'' U.S. invasion, but, rather, to remind Cubans of the government's ability to crush its domestic opponents.

It would be much more forthright to label legislation to lift restrictions on tourism to Cuba as the Cuban Armed Forces Stimulus Act.

• We constantly hear the argument that tourism transactions are permitted with other state-sponsors of terrorism, such as Iran, Sudan and Syria, so why not with Cuba? While undoubtedly rich in culture, Tehran, Khartoum and Damascus are not appealing tourism destinations or easily accessible to Americans.

Cuba, with its sunny beaches and proximity, is an appealing vacation destination for American tourists, but so, too, are many other Caribbean islands with democratic governments. Last year, more U.S. tourists visited Jamaica than the African continent or the Middle East. Should U. S. policy beggar friendly democratic neighbors to court an unfriendly repressive neighbor?

• Current U.S. policy toward Cuba has not failed. In order to label a policy as a failure, there needs to be evidence of the success, or likely success, of alternatives.

The fact is that almost two decades of Canadian and European tourism to Cuba has not eased the Castro regime's repression, improved its respect for basic human rights or helped Cuba's civil society gain any democratic space.
Even supporters of lifting tourism sanctions concede this. At a CATO Institute forum in December, U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, of Arizona, recognized that ``there are no guarantees that this will bring democracy to Cuba.''

What lifting restrictions on tourist travel will guarantee is that the Cuban military will double its income. To spend on what? Guns to rein in civil dissent? Technology to further censor Cubans' access to the Internet? Intelligence assets to support anti-American activities?

The question to be answered by Peterson, Moran, Flake and other supporters of lifting sanctions is: Do they trust the Cuban military with an exponential rise in income?

The answer leads to only one fact, with real consequences:

For Cubans, the consequence of lifting restrictions on U.S. tourism is more repression; for the United States, it's having financed that repression.

Mauricio Claver-Carone is director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC and editor of CapitolHillCubans.com.

If the Castro brothers’ regime really wanted US tourists to roam the streets of Havana, they wouldn't have beat up Yoani, arrested and continued to detain the US contractor, allowed Zapata Tamayo to die, nor badmouth Obama at every step of the way since the announcement of last November's House hearings. As Sec. Clinton said, ``There's proof that each time we try to promote an increased free flow of people and information, the Castro regime digs in.''

Castros sabotage ending U.S. Cuba embargo: Clinton
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040904469.html

Reuters
Friday, April 9, 2010; 8:13 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cuba's President Raul Castro and his brother, ex-leader Fidel Castro, have sought to sabotage U.S. moves to improve ties because they fear it will threaten their power, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday.

Clinton said Cuba's response to Obama administration efforts to enhance cooperation revealed "an intransigent, entrenched regime" that had no interest in political reform or ending the isolation imposed by Washington's 48-year old economic embargo on the island.

"It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do no want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years," Clinton said

"I find that very sad, because there should be an opportunity for a transition to a full democracy in Cuba and it's going to happen at some point, but it may not happen any time soon."

Obama has said he wants to recast ties that have been hostile since soon after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution. Fidel Castro stepped aside as president because of illness, with his younger brother Raul formally taking over in 2008.

The United States has over the past year lifted limits on Cuban Americans traveling and sending money to Cuba, and initiated talks with Havana on migration and mail service.

But Obama has said the economic embargo will stay until Cuba improves human rights and frees political detainees, and Clinton said the outlook was not good on either front.
"If you look at any opening to Cuba you can almost chart how the Castro regime
does something to try to stymie it," Clinton said while answering questions at Kentucky's University of Louisville.
Clinton noted that in 1996, when her husband former President Bill Clinton was seeking to improve ties, Cuba shot down two small U.S. planes that were distributing leaflets. The incident effectively ended that overture.

Over the past year, despite Obama's willingness to improve ties, Cuba arrested a U.S. contractor on suspicion of espionage while political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after an 85-day hunger strike in protest against prison conditions, Clinton said.

"It's a dilemma," Clinton said. "I hope (they) will begin to change. We're open to changing with them, but I don't know that that will happen before some more time goes by."

(Reporting by Andrew Quinn; editing by Philip Barbara)

According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Cuban regime's refusal to entertain the Obama administration's overtures to improve relations reveals that the Castro dictatorship is "an intransigent, entrenched regime," with no interest in political reform.

This determination by the Secretary of State will most certainly help the Obama State Department reevaluate Cuba/US relations. In the past, the State Department has struggled to create a cohesive Cuba policy. Secretary of State Hillary Clintonwasted no time in using this astonishing piece of information to help the Obama State Department begin unraveling the puzzle of dealing Cuba's communist dictatorship.

"It is my personal belief," Secretary Clinton said, "that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years."

This determination by the Secretary of State will most certainly help the Obama State Department reevaluate Cuba/US relations. In the past, the State Department has struggled to create a cohesive Cuba policy. Secretary of State Hillary Clintonwasted no time in using this astonishing piece of information to help the Obama State Department begin unraveling the puzzle of dealing Cuba's communist dictatorship.

"It is my personal belief," Secretary Clinton said, "that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States, because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years."