Obama Administration to Lift Cuba Travel Restrictions will be Welcome News to Christian Ministries

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Obama Administration to Lift Cuba Travel Restrictions will be Welcome News to Christian Ministries



By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service

WASHINGTON, D.C. (ANS) – President Obama will announce today that he is lifting travel restrictions that block Cuban Americans from traveling to Cuba and will relax the rules governing what items can be sent to the island, a senior White House official said, according to news sources.

Location of Cuba in The Caribbean Sea (Map via CNN website)

Michael D. Shear, writing for the Washington Post, says the decision does not lift the trade embargo on communist Cuba but eases the prohibitions that have restricted Cuban Americans from visiting their relatives and has limited what they can send back home.

Shear writes that as a candidate, Obama promised to seek closer relations with Cuba, and courted Cuban voters in the key state of Florida. As president, he has signaled that he intends to move toward a greater openness.

A White House aide said the president believes that democratic change will come to the Cuban nation more quickly if the United States reaches out to the people of Cuba and their relatives in the United States.

“But the move is highly controversial, especially among those who supported former president George W. Bush’s hardline policy, which viewed the restrictions as a way of spurring political change,” Shear comments.

“Obama’s administration takes a somewhat different view, but has resisted a wholesale elimination of the trade embargo and travel ban, which has been pushed for by some in Congress,” he wrote.

The announcement, which is expected to come later today, comes as the president prepares to leave Thursday for the Summit of the America’s in Trinidad, and a stop in Mexico.

ABC News’ Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller report that at today’s daily White House briefing, White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs will announce that the administration will lift travel, remittance, mail and business restrictions relating to the Communist nation of Cuba.

“The changes will allow unlimited visits to family members on the island as well as unlimited remittances — the cash recent immigrants to the U.S. send to relatives back home. President Bush imposed stricter restrictions on both in 2004,” the two ABC News reporters say.

“As hard as we search, we can’t find anyone who thinks the limitations Bush put on family travel and family remittances in 2004 were a good idea,” a senior administration official tells ABC News.

The ABC News team says the Obama administration will also take steps to enhance the flow of information by allowing U.S. telecommunications networks to link the U.S. and Cuba; and will allow an expansion of humanitarian items that can be sent to the island (including clothing, personal hygiene items and fishing equipment). It will remain illegal to send items to senior government officials and members of the Communist Party.

“These steps are being taken in support of the Cuban people’s desire to freely determine their own future and to open up the space needed to see democratic progress in Cuba,” says a White House official.

The announcement is timed to the president’s trip on Thursday and Friday to Mexico City and then Saturday and Sunday to Trinidad and Tobago for the Summit of the Americas, ABC News reported.

Central and South American leaders ranging from Mexican President Felipe Calderon to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez will likely pressure President Obama to also lift the embargo, imposed by President John F. Kennedy six months after President Obama was born, ABC News said.

The network reports that the Obama administration says there is both a moral and strategic argument in favor of lifting the restrictions. Morally, families will able to visit and help one another, the senior administration official says. Strategically, the official says, “family members in the U.S. will be good messengers of change and hope.”

During the campaign, the president signaled that these would be moves he would make, while maintaining the embargo.

“I have said that I will immediately allow unlimited family travel and remittances to the island,” then-Sen. Obama said in Miami Florida on May 23, 2008.

“It’s time to let Cuban Americans see their mothers and fathers, their sisters and brothers. It’s time to let Cuban American money make their families less depended upon the Castro regime. That is the committeemen that I’m making right here. I will maintaining the embargo. It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice, if you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.”

CNN is also reporting that the Obama administration has decided to loosen restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba for Cuban-Americans, according to senior administration officials Monday.

The changes in Cuban policy will be unveiled before President Obama’s trip to the Summit of the Americas. The White House planned to announce the changes later Monday.

“The decision represents a significant shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba. It comes days before Obama leaves for the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago,” CNN said.

Before he was elected, Obama promised to lower some of the barriers in Cuban-American relations, CNN said.

In an online news article, CNN says provisions attached to a $410 billion supplemental budget Obama signed in March also made it easier for Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba and to send money to family members on the island. In addition, they facilitated the sale of agricultural and pharmaceutical products to Cuba.

The provisions loosened restrictions enacted by President Bush after he came to office in 2001, CNN said.

According to CNN, several members of Congress see broader relations with Cuba as vital to U.S. interests. A group of senators and other supporters unveiled a bill March 31 to lift the 47-year-old travel ban to Cuba.

“I think that we finally reached a new watermark here on this issue,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-North Dakota, one of the bill’s sponsors.

CNN reported that Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana, another sponsor of the bill, issued a draft report in February that said it was time to reconsider the economic sanctions. Lugar is the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

CNN also said leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus also said it is time to change U.S. policy toward Cuba after returning from a meeting in Havana last week with both Fidel Castro and Cuban President Raul Castro.

Other lawmakers, however, remain adamantly opposed to easing sanctions on Cuba, arguing that such a move would only reward and strengthen the Castro regime, CNN reported.

Reps. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, and Frank Wolf, R-Virginia, last week urged Obama to refrain from easing the trade embargo or travel restrictions until the Cuban government releases all “prisoners of conscience,” shows greater respect for freedom of religion and speech and holds “free and fair” elections.

“Over the past 50 years, the Castros and their secret police have been directly responsible for killing thousands of nonviolent, courageous pro-democracy activists and for jailing and torturing tens of thousands of others. And they continue to this day to perpetrate their brutal crimes,” Smith said.

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-California, chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said it makes no sense to continue what she characterized as a failed policy.

International journalist Dan Wooding (ASSIST News photo)

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but by any objective standard our current policy toward Cuba just hasn’t worked. Simply put, it’s time to open dialogue and discussion with Cuba,” Lee said in a statement.

The news that the US relationship with Cuba could soon be normalized, has been welcomed by international journalist Dan Wooding, even though he has been told that he may be arrested if he ever goes back there.



“I’ve been to Cuba on three occasions and have constantly highlighted the human rights abuses there towards Christians,” said Wooding.

“However, if things open up, this means that many more Christians from the US will be able to travel there and bring encouragement to the believers there — and even more important, learn from them!”

** Michael Ireland, Chief Correspondent of ANS, is an international British freelance journalist who was formerly a reporter with a London (United Kingdom) newspaper and has been a frequent contributor to UCB Europe, a British Christian radio station. Michael has traveled to Albania and the former Yugoslavia, Holland, Germany and the former Czechoslovakia, Israel,and Canada. He has reported for ANS from Jordan, China, Russia, Jamaica, Mexico, and Nicaragua. Michael’s volunteer involvement with ASSIST News Service is a sponsored ministry department — Michael Ireland Media Missionary (MIMM) — of A.C.T. International at: Artists in Christian Testimony (A.C.T.) International.

<!–BYLINE:By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service–>