Trump to limit Cuba travel
President visits Miami today to outline all policy changes
President Donald Trump’s new Cuba policy will tighten restrictions on travel to the island and prohibit transactions with enterprises controlled by the country’s vast military, senior White House officials said.
Individually planned educational visits will no longer be allowed, and Americans will be prohibited from spending money at state-run hotels and restaurants with ties to the Cuban military, officials said Thursday.
In his remarks today at the Manuel Artime Theater in Miami, Trump is expected to cite human rights violations in Cuba for reversing some of the reforms made by former President Barack Obama.
The directive won’t totally erase Obama’s diplomatic legacy. The U.S. would continue to maintain diplomatic relations with its former Cold War foe, keeping embassies open in Havana and Washington. Trump will not reinstate the wet foot, dry foot policy, which allowed Cuban immigrants who reached U.S. soil to remain in the country. Cuban-Americans can continue to visit and send money to the island nation.
The new policy would not affect flights and cruise ship trips to Cuba, and Americans could continue to book accommodations through home-sharing services such as Airbnb, officials said.
Visitors, though, can expect tighter restrictions on travel than were in place during the Obama administration. While tourism to Cuba is banned, Americans are allowed to travel to Cuba for 12 reasons, such as for family visits, humanitarian missions and research.
Americans will still be able to visit family in Cuba and take part in group educational trips. But they could be subject to auditing by the federal government to verify they are following the regulations, officials said.
Trump is ending individual “people-to-people” travel, which enabled Americans to plan their own educational trips focused on learning about the island’s culture, officials said. The Obama administration allowed those trips in an attempt to foster understanding between the people of Cuba and the United States.
No changes are planned for rules on souvenirs, such as cigars and rum, that can be brought back to the United States, officials said. The Obama administration eased restrictions last year, allowing travelers to bring back as many as 100 cigars and several bottles of rum.
Agencies will have 30 days to begin writing the regulations once Trump signs the policy order, officials said. They did not provide a timeline for how long it could take for the new policies to take effect.
A change in policy toward Cuba has been long expected. In December 2014, Obama normalized relations with the nation after more than five decades of a hard line stance aimed at weakening the Castro regime. White House officials said the policy change is intended to cut off money to the Cuban military, which they said is oppressing the island’s people.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is in the forefront of those pushing for change in the Obama rapprochement.
“Economic practices that benefit the Cuban military at the expense of the Cuban people will soon be coming to an end #BetterDealforCuba ,” Rubio wrote Thursday on Twitter.
Later, in a video appearance on Facebook, Rubio amplified — though he didn’t provide details.
“And I’m very proud of what the president will be announcing tomorrow. It’s up to them to lay out those specifics, but suffice it to say that tomorrow’s going to be a good day for the Cuban people, a better deal for the Cuban people, which is who we’re trying to help here, by empowering them and doing so in a way that does not empower their oppressors.”
Words of praise from Rubio toward Trump are notable because they were bitter antagonists in 2016 when both sought the Republican presidential nomination. They aggressively criticized each other, and Rubio dropped out after Trump decisively defeated Rubio in the March 2016 Florida primary.
Later in the year, on the campaign trail in Miami during the fall election campaign, Trump condemned Obama’s normalization of relations between the two countries, which he called a “onesided deal for Cuba and with Cuba, benefits only the Castro regime.”
“You’ll be very happy,” Trump said in September. “I have so many friends from Cuba. Incredible people.”
While Cuban-American Republicans like Rubio and U.S. Rep. Mario DiazBalart of Miami have pushed for changing the Obama policy — which they believe does nothing to advance the conditions of the Cuban people and strengthens the oppressive Cuban regime — groups that favor continuing trade and tourism between the two nations had pushed for as little change as possible.
Cuba experts expected tough anti-regime rhetoric fromthe president, but not a complete rollback of Obama policies that ended more than 50 years of U.S. attempts to isolate Cuba, ushering in sweeping changes that allowed increased travel, business and communication links and restored diplomatic relations.
In a statement, Doral based cruise giant Carnival Corp. said it is pleased the directive will allow its ships to continue to sail to Cuba.
“We will review the extent of the tightening of the travel rules, but our guests have already been traveling under the 12 approved forms of travel to Cuba since we first undertook our historic first cruise to Cuba more than a year ago,” company officials said.
In a telephone news conference Thursday organized by the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, said there is no doubt that Cuba is run by a military dictatorship and “remains a highly repressive country even today.”
He called the country’s human rights record “deplorable.”
But, he said, rolling back the Obama-era opening wouldn’t make things better for the Cuban people.
Speaking from Havana on the call, Emily Morris, an associate fellowat Institute of the Americas at University College in London, said there is concern among Cuban people who have benefited from increased economic cooperation, especially travel, between the two nations. “You’d have a lot of people whose income would fall dramatically,” she said. “Clearly at the moment people are worried.”