Family ties could defy Cuba travel rules

Family ties could defy Cuba travel rules
By Paolo Spadoni Special to the Sentinel

February 6, 2006

The Bush administration's latest restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba,
implemented in June 2004 and mainly aimed to deny hard-currency
resources to the Castro government, have deterred American visits to the
island.

In 2004, according to Havana's authorities, visits by Cuban-Americans
and U.S. citizens not of Cuban descent were down by 50 percent and 40
percent, respectively. Moreover, Washington reported that the number of
U.S. legal visitors to Cuba dropped by more than 60 percent between June
2004 and June 2005.

However, it seems that Cuban-Americans remain committed to visit
relatives in Cuba despite new regulations that may interfere. While the
number of legal trips taken to the island from the United States has
clearly declined in the past year and a half, evidence from official
Cuban sources suggests that U.S. illegal travel might have increased in
2005 and helped to partially offset the reduction of authorized
journeys. Ironically, it is likely that Cuban-American visits accounted
for the vast majority of travel violations, even though Washington's
tighter rules were specifically designed to curtail family contacts.

If this is the case, Washington officials underestimated the
determination of Cuban-Americans to find creative ways to spend time
with relatives on the island, a development that the Castro government
should obviously be pleased about.

American citizens not of Cuban descent are traveling to Cuba in
dramatically fewer numbers. According to the Cuban National Statistical
Office (ONE), fewer than 50,000 U.S. citizens (excluding
Cuban-Americans) visited the island with or without their government's
permission in 2004, as compared to about 85,000 in 2003. And only about
29,000 of them traveled to Cuba between January and October 2005, down
by an additional 30 percent over the same period in 2004.

As the aforementioned individuals include not only journalists,
academics, businessmen and members of religious and humanitarian
organizations, but also regular tourists, it appears reasonable to
assume that illegal trips to Cuba by U.S. citizens of non-Cuban origin
have decreased substantially in the past two years. The New York-based
U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council (USCTEC) estimated that 23,000
Americans with no family connections in Cuba legally traveled to the
island in 2003. They accounted for less than one-third of all U.S.
visitors not of Cuban descent reported by ONE that year, which means
that unauthorized American travelers could have been as many as 60,000
in 2003.

On the other hand, Cuban sources indicate that illegal trips by
Cuban-Americans might be on the rise. It should be noted that, before
2004, Washington's authorities leveled fines against Americans who
visited Cuba without permission but paid little attention to U.S.
citizens of Cuban descent, as the latter were allowed to visit relatives
on the island once a year without approval from their government. Yet
given that Bush's new restrictions limit such visits to just once every
three years and require a specific license for each trip, it is
conceivable that Cuban-Americans began to take steps to bypass U.S.
rules. After all, they can easily travel to Cuba through third countries
or eventually take advantage of existing licensing programs -- like
religious ones -- reserved for purposes other than family reunions.

Havana's official statistics report the total number of Cubans living
abroad who visit Cuba every year without providing details on their
country of residence. But these figures are a good indicator of
Cuban-American travel to the island because the United States has by far
the largest concentration of Cuban immigrants. For instance, USCTEC
estimated that about 130,000 Cuban-Americans traveled to Cuba in 2003,
representing almost 80 percent of all Cuban arrivals reported by ONE
(about 168,000). And this share was probably higher because several
Cuban-Americans visit their country of origin more than once a year,
mainly to engage in informal money transfers.

Recent data by ONE reveal that more than 110,000 Cubans residing abroad
traveled to the island between January and October 2005, as compared to
99,000 during the same period in 2004. Figures for 2004 are inflated by
a substantial number of Cuban-Americans who rushed to meet family
members in Cuba before the June 30 deadline, and authorized journeys
have declined since then. Thus, last year's figures could be the result
either of a spectacular, but rather unlikely, growth in the number of
arrivals of Cubans living in countries other than the United States or a
more likely increase of Cuban-American illegal trips.

Keeping Cuban families apart could be a bigger challenge than U.S.
authorities had envisioned.

Paolo Spadoni, PhD, is a visiting lecturer in the department of
political science at Stetson University in DeLand.

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