Statement of Joan Slote

Thank you all for inviting me to speak today.

I speak to you today as a mother, a grandmother, a breast cancer survivor, and an American who loves our country, but who cannot understand why our government is threatening to take away my social security check for riding my bicycle in Cuba.

I love to bike and I love bike tours. I've been biking in most of the United States and in 20 different countries.

Three years ago, when I received an attractive catalog from Worldwide Adventures, a Canadian company, that listed foreign bike tours, I looked it over with pleasure. I was pleased to find a trip to Cuba. The catalog
stated that it was legal for American citizens to travel to Cuba as long as they went through Mexico, Canada or other Caribbean Islands. I never questioned that statement and I signed up.

With a friend named Amy Olsen, I flew to Toronto and on to Cuba in January 2000. We didn't bike in Havana, but we were taken on a tour of the city, and we wandered through intriguing side streets and dramatic squares. We rode our bikes through the countryside, were taken down a deep cave, and looked with pleasure and some amusement at the old cars from the 1950s that we saw still being driven. The people were great; friendly and interested. Some young boys rode with us most of one day.

We came home through Toronto and when entering the U.S., we were asked if we had visited any other country besides Canada. Someone suggested that we not mention Cuba. But trying to set a good example, I foolishly said why lie? My traveling companion Amy and I are now being punished for that honesty.

I now know that it is not legal for a U.S. citizen to go to Cuba unless that travel is through a licensed U.S. company or one gets special permission from our government.

I was fined over $7000 plus $10 for every dollar I spent (I spent about $18 on souvenirs plus the airport tax of $20). I appealed to Congresswoman Susan Davis and to Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, but the government won't budge on its insistence that we pay these steep fines. I now have 2 lawyers helping me for free: one, a personal friend, former Congressman "Pete" McCloskey, and another from an organization called Global Exchange.

Despite their advocacy, the fine is now steeper still; because of interest charges and administration fees, the fine is now up to $9,870.75. The U.S. Treasury Department has told us that they will take it from my Social
Security if I don't pay it immediately. I learned that I could have asked for a hearing, but never received the letter telling me so until it was too late - because I was on a bicycle tour in Italy from which I returned to
care for my terminally ill son. I also know another bicyclist from Tucson who made the same mistake as I and was fined $15,500. She was lucky and was able to settle for $1,000.

I cannot understand why any American is fined for exercising their right to see this beautiful world - and even if the fine were reasonable, the way it is being administered against me and others seems heartless. What I have gone through is worse than my mastectomy. I hope others do not have to continue suffer as I have.

Members of Congress have an opportunity to end in the future the injustice that I am experiencing today. I would very much appreciate your support in helping me cope with the aftermath of the mistake that I made when I believed that brochure three years ago. I would like a hearing; I would like a settlement; I would like our government to stop threatening me and my Social Security for having taken a bike trip to Cuba.

But most important, I would like all of our citizens to have their liberty restored, so that anyone who chooses to go to Cuba - for vacation, for a family visit, for their business or education - can do so with the same
rights and responsibilities that pertain to any travel destination, anyplace in the world. We Americans can make a difference in Cuba by traveling there; we should have our freedom back.