CIP Cuba Project

OFAC Cracks Down on Travelers to Cuba

Travel permits harder to come by under Bush administration
The Dallas Morning News
By Tracey Eaton
March 23, 2003

HAVANA - Americans are itching to see Cuba. They want to walk the streets of Old Havana, sip seven-year-old rum and taste those legendary cigars. And college professors from Havana are dying to go to Dallas to sample Tex-Mex cuisine, glide to the top of Reunion Tower and meet with their academic buddies.

Well, buena suerte, as the Cubans say: Good luck.

The United States has cracked down on travel to and from Cuba. It's lockdown time, courtesy of the Bush administration.

Visas to enter the United States are suddenly harder to get. American officials explain it's all part of the anti-terrorist campaign. Applicants have to be interviewed, screened, fingerprinted. All that takes time.

Critics say it's politics, a way to cut off dialogue between the two countries and squeeze the bedraggled Cuban economy.

Some 106 Cubans applied for visas to travel to Dallas for a March 27-29 academic conference sponsored by the 5,500-member Latin American Studies Association. But so far, only four or five have gotten visas, according to
the University of Havana.

"We don't understand it," said Olga Fernandez, a researcher who plans to go. "I mean, it's an academic conference. We're not terrorists. Besides, a lot of us have been to the United States before, and we had no trouble getting a visa. But things seem different this time."

U.S. officials say they can't comment on individual visa requests. The number of visas granted to Cuban residents plunged to 7,000 last year from more than 18,000 in 2001, the Washington Times reported recently.
Anti-terrorism legislation led to the drop, officials said.

Playground dreams

Those who favor normalized relations with Cuba resent the toughened policy.

Take the case of American Bill Hauf. All he wanted to do was build playgrounds in Cuba. It sounded simple enough. But nearly four years later, his swings, slides and monkey bars still aren't off the ground.

He blames an obscure U.S. government agency, the Office of Foreign Asset Control or OFAC, which enforces laws on trading with "enemy nations."

"They're always changing the rules," Mr. Hauf grumbled over dinner in Havana. "Then when you need them, they're impossible to reach. They don't answer letters. Don't return phone calls. They think they can run over
anyone."

Phil Peters, a researcher and former State Department official who is studying the agency, said, "It's the closest thing we have to a Third World bureaucracy in the United States."

"They don't answer people, or they drag out the process to the point where it's impossible to travel," Mr. Peters said. "That would leave a reasonable person to conclude that the point of the policy is to hope these people will
go away, that they won't travel. The Bush administration clearly wants there to be less travel to Cuba."

Complicated mission

The agency, an arm of the Treasury Department, didn't respond to requests for comment. Its defenders say it does an admirable job enforcing the four-decade-old Cuban trade embargo despite scarce resources and increasing demands. Americans' "misperceptions" about Cuba have complicated OFAC's mission, agency director Richard Newcomb told a Senate subcommittee last year.

Travel guides portray the island "as just another Caribbean tourist destination," he said. In reality, "travel for purposes of tourism or most business transactions remains strictly prohibited."

Yet many people are indignant; they go to Cuba as "an act of civil disobedience" and see travel restrictions as "an infringement of their constitutional rights," Mr. Newcomb said.

To be sure, Cuba is one of the most controversial travel destinations on the planet.

Tens of thousands of Americans visit the island every year, but Bush administration officials are determined to stop them, saying tourist dollars only prolong Fidel Castro's rule, depriving more than 11 million Cubans of
freedom.

It should be no surprise that OFAC is feeling the squeeze. Political winds and changing times have influenced the agency ever since President John F. Kennedy imposed the trade ban in 1963.

President Bill Clinton loosened the travel restrictions in 1999, saying that "people-to-people" contact with Cubans would promote democratic change and spread American ideals.

Suddenly Havana was teeming with Americans. Visitors ranged from college professors, students and lawyers to musicians, athletes and Hollywood stars. And they could go to Cuba as long as OFAC gave them a license to travel.

There were abuses, tour company directors concede. Some groups lent their OFAC license numbers to others for illegal fees of $250 to $450 per traveler. Others journeyed to the island for educational or cultural tours,
then spent most of their time partying or sunning themselves at the beach.

President Bush took office and ordered a crackdown. The number of written notices sent to suspected violators immediately rose - from 188 in 2000, the last year of the Clinton administration, to 766 in 2001, the first year of
the Bush administration.

But the door had been opened. Americans had gotten used to the idea of traveling to Cuba. And they don't want to give that up.

Pro-travel group

Something else happened during the Clinton administration. A loose-knit network of pro-travel activists quietly took shape. These travelers are young and old, rural and urban, blue-collar and professional. They come from
throughout the United States, but have a common bond: Cuba. Lisa Valenti, president of the United States-Cuba Sister Cities Association, is a leader of the movement.

"Freedom of travel...the right to experience the world we live in firsthand is an inalienable human right," she said.

Her association sent more than 160 Americans from 32 cities and 17 states to Cuba for the group's annual conference in 2001.

Ms. Valenti hopes as many as 500 Americans will turn out for this year's conference, set for March 30 to April 6.

People-to-people contact with Cubans is the best way to make peace with the island, she said, but working in Cuba hasn't been easy.

Some Sister Cities "diplomats" were harassed and interrogated by U.S. customs agents after returning from the group's 2001 conference, she said. Then last year some members received penalty notices, saying they had
traveled illegally.

Ms. Valenti's advice: Don't be intimidated by the "scary letters." Read the law. Get a lawyer. Request a hearing.

Steep penalties

The penalty for going to Cuba illegally can be steep - as much as $55,000. But typical fines are $5,000 to $7,500, Mr. Newcomb said. After settlement talks, that usually drops to $2,000 to $5,000. Ms. Valenti says that the
fines are pointless and that Americans shouldn't have to get a license to travel anywhere.

"It should be of concern to all Americans that we now have less civil liberties than Canadians and Europeans," she said. "We'll have to change 'Land of the Free...' to 'Land of the Licensed.' "

No matter, Mr. Newcomb testified, sister city trips are not allowed. Other examples of illegal visits included architects taking walking tours of Havana and railroad hobbyists climbing around on Cuba's aging locomotives,
he said.

Tour packages are also prohibited, according to OFAC.

Joan Slote, a 74-year-old grandmother and champion cyclist, found out the hard way that the agency means business. She took a cycling tour of western Cuba, and U.S. authorities fined her $8,305.23.

Pay up, officials said, or the government may start deducting the penalty from her monthly Social Security check. Her case is pending.

Admittedly, OFAC sometimes goes astray, said Dennis Hays, a leader of the Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful anti-Castro lobbying group. It shouldn't be "going after grandmothers on bike tours. We should be focused on blatant offenders."

Traveling to Cuba, he added, is not a victimless crime. The hotels where Americans stay deny access to ordinary Cubans, they discriminate in hiring and exploit workers. So American travelers are "directly contributing to the enslavement of the Cuban people - no matter how much they tip the cabaña boy," he said.

Mr. Hauf just wants to build his playgrounds. He's chipping in $100,000 toward the project and says that if there aren't any more delays, it just might become a reality in May.

Still, after all the red tape he's had to cut through, he's bitter about the experience.

He says the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, or some other agency, ought to look into OFAC and try to figure out if there's a way to improve it.

Others agree - and Mr. Hauf is determined to spread the word.

"We're going to keep strangling them the way they strangle us."