U.S.-Cuba policy: Time to end deceitful travel controls

By Weekly Archive On Mar 31, 2009

From
the Sun-Sentinel

President
Carter lifted all Cuba travel controls in 1977. From then until 1982,
Americans were free to travel to Cuba and to spend money in the
process.

That should have been the end of it. But then enter
the Reagan administration, which on April 19, 1982, re-imposed
restrictions on travel to Cuba. Except for special categories of
people with licenses, no one would be allowed to spend money in Cuba.
This limited travel as effectively as an outright ban.

Why
these new sanctions? Because, said the Reagan administration, of
increasing Cuban arms shipments to Central America, and because Cuba
refused to negotiate our concerns over its aggressive actions
there.

But both charges were outright misrepresentations.

I
was at the time the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. In
December of 1981, the Cubans informed me that they were halting all
arms shipments, and hoped this could open the way to negotiations in
Central America and a dialogue with the United States.

I
reported this to the State Department and asked if we had any
credible evidence to the contrary, i.e., of continuing shipments. If
not, it seemed to me we should respond positively, that we should be
open to a dialogue.

In March, the Department acknowledged that
we did not have the hard evidence of continuing shipments, but said
that there would be no response. In other words, we were not
interested in a dialogue.

And though the administration
continued to talk of "increasing Cuban arms support," I saw
intelligence reports which confirmed drastic reductions, as the
Cubans had said.

Our position in Central America, then, was
based on outright misrepresentations — and so was the Reagan
administration’s re-imposition of travel controls in 1982.

It
was not Cuba that was refusing to negotiate in Central America; it
was the Reagan administration, and it continued to refuse all through
the years.

And the deceit continued under the George W. Bush
administration. On June 16, 2004, for example, it severely restricted
academic travel to Cuba. And it did so because it said: "academic
institutions regularly abuse [the] license category and engage in a
form of tourism."

But it could never point to a single
abuse, as it was required to do under the Administrative Procedures
Act. These new limitations, then, were in fact in violation of the
law.

We look to President Obama and the Congress to bring an
end to this shameful history of violating the constitutional rights
of American citizens with measures that are based on lies and that
are themselves outside the law. The Treasury Department’s action on
March 11 to increase Cuban-American travel should be but the first
step.

President Obama has the authority immediately to rescind
the various executive orders signed by Bush in 2004 on which the
restrictions on academic and educational travel, and the travel of
Cuban-American families, are based.

And he can support bills
now before the House and Senate to allow all Americans to travel
freely to Cuba, as they have a constitutional right to do.

Wayne
S. Smith is a Senior Fellow of the Center for International Policy in
Washington, D.C.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-wscol29sbmar29,0,5901900.story