Obama administration lifts '04 restrictions on travel to Cuba

The new rules issued by OFAC still limit the trips to once a year.

MIAMI (MCT) - Cuban-Americans are now free to visit relatives on the island once a year and stay as long as they like, using a new license issued by the Obama administration.

The general license for travel by Cuban-Americans removes a tricky loophole Congress created in its 2009 budget bill, which removed funding for enforcing travel restrictions but did not lift the restrictions.

That meant traveling to Cuba would have been illegal, but a passenger was not likely to get caught.

With the new license, created late Wednesday, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control officially lifted the tightened restrictions enacted by former President George W. Bush in 2004, which had limited trips to every three years and only to see immediate relatives.

"This is going to do wonders for my father," said Arlene Garcia, a Chicago saleswoman who joined the campaign to lift travel restrictions so she could visit her dad, who lives in Camaguey and has lung cancer. "The fact that I am able to see him is the best medicine. Every time I go, I'm adding time to his life."

She called her father Thursday with the news and promised to be in Camaguey by May.

A posting on the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Web site indicates Cuban Americans can follow regulations that existed before Bush tightened the rules in June 2004. The rules now allow:

_A trip every 12 months with a general license that does not require an application process;

_Passengers wanting to travel again within the same year can apply for "specific licenses." Approval will be given case by case.

_A broader definition of who qualifies as family and can be visited.

_A per diem spending of $179.

While advocates for liberalized travel to the island welcomed the news, they cautioned that it is still not what President Barack Obama promised on the campaign trail: no restrictions at all.

"This is a step in the right direction," said Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Cuban American Commission for Family Rights, which advocated for the change. "This is not a presidential executive order removing all restrictions."

In a 2007 column published in The Miami Herald, Obama reiterated what he had declared in a public speech: "Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island. Accordingly, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island."

Light your Free Virtual Prayer Candle for Christmas

The new rules issued by OFAC still limit the trips to once a year.

"This is incomplete," said Armando Garcia, who runs Marazul charters, which operates flights to Cuba. "The illegal dynamic will continue."

But the White House hinted Thursday that more changes could come.

"The guidance issued yesterday by the Treasury Department was issued pursuant to a law passed by Congress," White House spokeswoman Gannet Tseggai said. "The president was not involved in the drafting of that provision, and it does not take the place of his own review of family visits and family cash remittances."

Travel to Cuba became a thorny issue among Cuban-American politicians, who were largely divided along party lines. South Florida's Republican representatives have argued that increased travel to Cuba infuses the Castro regime with hard currency that helps keep it afloat.

The congressional spending bill passed this week also created a new general license for Americans who want to travel to Cuba to sell medical and agricultural goods to the Cuban government.

That license will be formalized soon, Treasury spokeswoman Heather Wong said.

The Cuban-American travel license starts immediately.

"This is positive news, but it falls short of what we wanted," said Carlos Lazo, a Cuban veteran of the Iraq war who earned a Bronze Star and who became a cause celebre when he was not allowed to visit his children during a leave in 2005 because he had already seen them two years earlier.

"I hope this is just the first and smallest of the many steps to be taken in correcting an erred policy that's gone awry for 50 years," he said Thursday by phone from his home in Seattle. "As for me, I will visit my family as soon as possible."

___

© 2009, The Miami Herald.