Ahead of the Summit of the Americas April 17-19 in Trinidad and Tobago, President Obama appears ready to declare an end to the ban restricting Cubans in the U.S. from visiting their family members more than once a year, as well as the amount of money they can send there.
An administration offical said: “The intent is to try to test the waters and see if we can get Cuba to move in another direction. One way of getting the regime to open up may be to let people travel, increase exchanges and get money flowing to the island.”
Otto Reich was interviewed on NPR yesterday regarding this issue. Mr Reich, a former Cuban-American senior official of previous Republican administrations, is very much in the camp of the conservative view that frowns upon any easing of restrictions that currently restricts the flow of dollars to the island, maintaining that obtaining foreign currency only strengthens the Castro Regime.
Responding to criticism from Cubans residing in the US who were against the restrictions placed on how many times they could visit their family, Mr Reich made an interesting point; That since Cubans have the privilege of receiving US residency after 1 year and 1 day after having arrived in the country, they must recognize that there are certain rules that come with those benefits. He questioned how someone could benefit from a political refugee status while clamoring for the right to go back as often as they’d like, to the totalitarian regime from which they fled.
This logic, however, does not answer the question on Cuba being the only country that American Citizens are expressly prohibited by their government from visiting. There are hints of a wider lifting on travel bans, it remains to be seen how far the Obama administration is willing to take this.
In terms of support and opposition for this measure in the Cuban-American community, the same NPR program highlighted what seems to be a generational shift, where the older generations who knew Cuba before Castro are more likely to take the hard line, while younger people who grew up in the US tend to be more inclined to see benefits in more normalized relations with Cuba.
