Center for International Policy

Race sparks new Cuba thinking

By Wayne S. Smith
September 10, 2007
The Orlando Sentinel

Share |

Hillary Clinton has called Barak Obama "naive and irresponsible" for urging a change in our ongoing policy toward Cuba, a policy which Clinton, according to one of her campaign spokeswomen, "supports."

But all Obama was calling for was an end to the restrictions on the visits of Cuban-Americans to their families on the island. This is hardly a longstanding pillar of our Cuba policy. Rather, until 2004, Cuban-Americans were able to visit their families on the island once a year. Further, no licenses were required, so if a need arose, perhaps some emergency in the family, they could actually travel more often than that. None of that seemed to cause any problems.

But problems or not, in 2004 the Bush administration came forward with new rules, goaded on by a group of hard-line exiles who would never go visit their families anyway. Henceforth, Cuban-Americans would only be able to visit their families once every three years, for no more than two weeks.

There were various other painful restrictions, but the worst was that there was no provision at all for emergency travel in case of death or illness in the family. If a Cuban-American had gone down in, say, June, to visit his or her mother, returned and was then told in October that the mother was near death, there was no way to get an emergency license to go down and be at the mother's bedside. Rather, the applicant would be told by the Treasury Department that he or she could go down in another three years to visit the grave.

That is simply inhumane and would seem to accomplish absolutely nothing. Obama was right to call for the removal of these restrictions on family travel and it is difficult to understand Clinton's logic in calling him "irresponsible" for doing so. Indeed, it is difficult to understand why she is not also calling for their removal.

Nor is Obama's position on family travel likely to lose votes in Florida. Polls indicate the majority of Cuban-Americans favor family travel and want the present restrictions removed. There is a core of hard-liners who disagree. But they would not have voted for Obama in any event. Further, polls indicate the majority of Floridians, of all ethnic backgrounds, favor lifting all travel controls on Cuba. Hence, Obama would almost certainly win more votes in Florida today than before his statement against restrictions on family travel. Not a dumb move at all.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, another presidential candidate, meanwhile, goes well beyond the issue of family travel. In a statement on Aug. 15, he said our "misguided policies of the past 46 years" of trying to isolate Cuba were a complete failure, and called instead for opening the flood gates for contacts with the Cuban people, removing restrictions not just on the travel of Cuban-Americans but of all Americans. Ordinary American citizens, he said, are the "best ambassadors we have, and the free exchange of ideas and the interaction between Americans and Cubans are important ways to encourage democracy in Cuba."

Dodd also called for the removal of all restrictions on the sale of foods and medicines to Cuba. Such restrictions, he said, were immoral, and they also hurt American farm families economically. We should be encouraging Cuban authorities to buy U.S. foods and medicines rather than buying them elsewhere.

Dodd ended his statement by noting that holding to our present policy will simply leave us sitting on the sidelines as the future of Cuba is being decided. "It is time to engage," he said, "before it is too late to have a positive influence on the political landscape which is rapidly taking shape there."

Dodd's statement caused a stir. It will doubtless cause a larger one when in early September he voices the same position a number of times in the heart of Miami.

Dodd's position, and even Obama's support for family travel, represent something new on the campaign landscape -- something new reflecting the fact that the polls indicate the overwhelming majority of Americans realize our decades-old Cuba policy has failed. There is a growing sense out there that it is time to try something new.

Wayne S. Smith is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University. He had long experience in Cuban affairs in the Department of State, including as chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (1979-82).