Crackdown on Cuba Travel Angers Some

[Judi Lynn]

Crackdown on Cuba Travel Angers Some
Bush Effort Halts Trip by Group of Athletes, Doctors Who Work With Country's Disabled
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A25


The athletes and doctors were due to meet in Miami on Nov. 13 and depart for Havana the next day. Those who needed wheelchairs would bring them. Others would arrive with teaching materials and donated artificial limbs in anticipation of working with disabled Cubans.
Three years in a row, World Team Sports, a small nonprofit group, had received permission to travel to Cuba. But the day before the scheduled rendezvous, the Bush administration ruled that, this time, the trip would violate U.S. policy.

"I am absolutely furious," said Josh Sharpe, 29, a wheelchair competitor from Florida. "I was looking forward to helping the disabled athletes who don't have the opportunities we have. It was a feel-good trip, it was a do-good trip, but with policies that don't make sense, nobody wins."

What angered Sharpe was the Bush administration's newly toughened effort to reduce the number of U.S. citizens who visit Cuba. Such travel, limited by law since the 1960s in an effort to isolate and undermine the Communist government, had become easier after a Clinton administration policy shift in 1999.

In recent months, licenses for travel to Cuba have been reduced, and prosecution of accused lawbreakers has intensified, with the Treasury Department recruiting administrative law judges for the first time to hear long dormant civil cases. (snip/...)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47361-2003Dec8.html

[Osolomia]

1. "Critics of Bush's approach include a growing number of Republicans"

While Dems* like Lieberman vote AGAINST your freedom to travel:

snip/...

Critics of President Bush's approach include a growing number of Republicans, including Sen. Larry E. Craig (Idaho), who said in an Oct. 23 speech that the administration was "running from a fight" by not allowing American travelers to engage Cubans firsthand -- the kind of contact, he said, that helped produce historic changes in the Soviet Union and China.

He also criticized the proportion of resources being spent on the travel ban and the economic embargo. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces sanctions against countries, terrorist networks and drug traffickers around the world, assigned 21 of its 120 employees -- and $3.3 million of its $21.2 million budget -- to Cuba in fiscal 2003.

"The money spent on tracking down American citizens and enforcing this failed policy," Craig said, "would be better spent on tracking down potential terrorists in this country."

Critics look at Bush's Cuba policy and see Florida politics. Cuban Americans strongly support the embargo, and 80 percent of those casting votes in 2000 voted for Bush, who won Florida and thus the presidency by 537 votes.

"It's about Florida, it's quite plain," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a founding member of the bipartisan Cuba Working Group. Intensifying an embargo that has failed for nearly 40 years to topple Fidel Castro's government, he said, is akin to promising to "beat my head against the wall even harder."

[Judi Lynn]

2. The pResident is unwittingly uniting a lot of Americans AGAINST HIM!

This kind of situation has been repeating a LOT since he took the White House:

For years, if accused violators refused to settle a case and requested a hearing, their cases all but died for lack of judges. But OFAC recently recruited three administrative judges and started civil action in 90 dormant cases.

One of these involves Jennifer Wolfe Kennelly, a registered nurse from Nantucket, Mass. She traveled to Cuba for pleasure in 1999 and, soon afterward, received an OFAC letter warning her that she may have broken the law. She requested a hearing, asserting that she had not known the rules.

Wolfe Kennelly said she considers it unconstitutional that only Cuban Americans are permitted to travel to the island without explicit permission.

"I've never, ever, ever been involved in the court system, except for a divorce, but this is something I believe in," she said. "I'm prepared to stand up for myself."

[Vogon_Glory]

3. Do Visiting Cuban Emigres Get to Pay More For Their Hobby?

I am wondering if the further restrictions imposed by Arbustito and company on which American citizens and residents can visit Cuba is hitting Cuban emigres in their pocket book. Are these restrictions making it more costly for emigres to fly from US airports like Miami to Havana?

Certainly the restrictions are emptying the seats of a lot of charter flights. When I visited Cuba in February of 2003, about half of the aircraft was composed of study and tour groups, the other of Cuban emigres visiting the island. With the seats of would-be Cuban visitors being emptied by Dubya Bush administration fiat, there must be a lot less gross with only the emigres and privileged characters to fill them. And even charter operations don't fly for free.

I am not at all sympathetic with the emigres who would beat the drums for restricting travel to Cuba, then find themselves facing the prospect of costlier charter flights caused by their actions.

[Osolomia]

4. DUhers sure do love to fantasize and ignore the facts!

According to the thousands of news articles and editorials and background information and actvisits links that have been posted on DU:

LAST MARCH BUSH UNILATERALLY EASED THE RESTRICTIONS FOR THE CUBAN-AMERICAN “EXILES” SO MORE OF THEM ARE FREE TO GO AND SPEND 10 TIMES AS MUCH MONEY AS PREVIOUSLY ALLLOWED.

BUSH TIGHTENED THE RESTRICTIONS ON AMERICAN-AMERICANS SO LESS OF YOU CAN GO AND MOST AREN’T ALLOWED TO SPEND A NICKEL THERE.

BOTH OFAC AND CONGRESS PLEADED FOR PUBLIC COMMENT. THE LINKS WERE POSTED MANY A TIME ON DU AND SANK LIKE A STONE EVERY TIME. SO THE GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY OF A VETO PROOF VOTE HANDED TO THE DEMS ON A SILVER PLATTER WAS NOT TO BE.

NEVERTHELESS, LAST MONTH THE BIPARTISAN MAJORITY IN THE HOUSE AND SENATE VOTED FOR YOUR FREEDOM TO TRAVEL TO CUBA. LIEBERMAN AND DOZENS OF OTHER DEMS* VOTED AGAINST IT, NONE OF THE OTHER PREZ CANDIDATES WERE PRESENT, KUCINICH IS THE ONLY ONE WHO STANDS OPPOSED TO THE BUSH/DEM DOCTRINE ON CUBA.

Evidently the majority of DUers prefer to ignore the facts and cling to their ignorant fantasies, just like the freepers do! No wonder Americans are the only people on the planet who are not free to see Cuba for themselves and for many more years to come at this rate.

Btw, this weekend's charter flights to Havana are chock full of hordes of agricultural businesspeople from North Dakota, Minnesota and several other states hoping to sign a few more multi-million dollar deals with "Castro's Cuba". There's been a steady stream of late as a search of DU goes to show.