Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY), Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Max Baucus (D-MT) and Representatives Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and William Delahunt (D-MA) have introduced bills in the Senate and House to end the Cuba travel ban. The Export Freedom to Cuba Act H.R. 1814 and the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act S. 894 have already won bipartisan support; egislation to repeal the travel ban has previously passed the House and Senate on several occasions.

Ending the travel ban ensures freedom for Americans. America’s cherished belief in personal freedom should lead us to limit freedom of travel only when travel could somehow damage national security interests. That is not the case with Cuba today. Instead of using our greatest asset, the American people, to speak directly to Cubans about our democratic values and ideas, the United States operates a heavy-handed licensing process that restricts
travel, monetary assistance for families, and even humanitarian donations. Americans are routinely investigated and fined by the US Treasury Department for “unlicensed travel”.

The travel ban offends family values. The Administration tightened travel restrictions last year to limit family visits by Cuban-Americans to once every three years. This rule allows no exceptions for humanitarian emergencies. The definition of “family” was narrowed so that some Cuban-Americans can no longer visit, wire money, or send packages to aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, or nephews. The travel ban is now an assault against the Cuban-American family and their kin on the island.

Lifting the travel ban will increase demand for U.S. products in Cuba. Current agricultural sales to Cuba, which in 2004 alone totaled nearly $400 million, would increase substantially, benefiting American farmers, exporters and shippers.

The current restrictions on academic travel to Cuba inhibit learning and cross-cultural exchange. Because of rules implemented in 2004, over 90% of academic exchange programs to Cuba were cancelled. Although legislation has been proposed, asserting that the President should not prohibit or otherwise restrict foreign travel undertaken for educational purposes, these new restrictions continue to harm academic programs.

Focus on terrorism, not policing travel to Cuba. The Treasury Department office that governs Cuba travel, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), is a key part of the Department of Treasury’s effort to break al Qaeda’s global money network. Fighting terrorism should be the focus of its activities, not duties such as licensing, investigating, and fining travelers to Cuba or seizing rum and cigars.

Lifting the travel ban would help average Cubans. Families would benefit. Employees in the travel and tourist sector would benefit. Even Cuba’s small entrepreneurs – especially private restaurateurs, taxi drivers, artisans, families that rent rooms in their homes – would benefit from American travelers using their services. Greater travel by Americans will expand their numbers dramatically; they will gain independence, and their families will enjoy better livelihoods.

Cubans, even Cuba’s political dissidents, support ending the travel ban. The Cuban Catholic Church opposes the embargo, as do Cuba’s mainline Protestant Churches. Even leaders among Cuba’s political dissidents support lifting the travel ban. “Just as we insist on the right of Cubans to travel, to leave and return to our country freely, a right now denied us, so too do we support the right of Americans to travel freely, including travel to Cuba.” Human rights activists Elizardo Sanchez and Vladimiro Roca in a statement to the Center for International Policy, May 14, 2003

April 27th was Cuba Action Day. Participants from across the country, representing business, agriculture, Cuban Americans, academics and other Americans who want the freedom to travel to Cuba visited their representatives in Congress to discuss their freedom to travel, and the legislation to end the ban on travel to Cuba.