Why President Obama should issue an executive order on travel to Cuba
Drafted by the Washington Office on Latin America, Center for Democracy in the Americas, and the Latin America Working Group. Feel free to learn and share.
The administration is considering an Executive Order to be issued by the President that would broaden the scope of what’s generally called “people to people” non-tourist travel to Cuba. This is the same authority President Obama used in April 2009 to restore the unrestricted rights of Cuban Americans to visit their families on the island.
Issuing the executive order is in the economic interest, the foreign policy interest, and the national security interest of the U.S. It fulfills the President’s commitment to seek new openings with Cuba, and encourages and responds to the processes of change going on in Cuba itself. There is broad support for these changes among U.S. organizations and constituencies. Announcing an executive order to permit more travel to Cuba and more engagement would not harm the President politically. In fact, it would strengthen the President at home and position the U.S. on the side of the Cuban people at a critical moment in their history.
1. Opening up Cuba to non-tourist travel is the right thing to do
U.S. citizens should interact more with the Cuban people, and so the U.S. government should reduce restrictions on purposeful travel by Americans to Cuba. Religious groups visiting congregations on the island, and students engaged in academic programs and research, are positive examples of how Americans can engage the Cuban people directly. The Executive Order will remove the senseless and onerous barriers to those interactions.
2. Implementing the EO fulfills the President’s commitment on policy toward Cuba
In the campaign and later at the Summit of the Americas, President Obama promised to engage Cuba if Cuba’s government took steps to reform its economy and release political prisoners. Cuba is in the process of laying off 500,000 state workers and expanding self-employment and the small business sector in order to absorb the unemployed workers. It has also freed more than 50 political prisoners since July 2010. Issuing the Executive Order now would demonstrate recognition of the important changes taking place in Cuba and the U.S.’s interest in encouraging continued reforms. It would fulfill the commitment the President made.
3. There is substantial support in Congress
More than 180 Members of the 111th Congress have cosponsored Cuba travel and agricultural trade legislation, including at least 16 Republicans. In the Senate, 44 Senators have cosponsored legislation to ease Cuba travel and trade restrictions and many more would vote in favor of such proposals today. There will still be substantial support for ending the travel ban in the next Congress, in both the Senate and the House.
4. It’s in the economic interests of the United States to support this change
While the President cannot lift the travel ban outright, the administration can issue regulations that significantly increase travel to Cuba, and also reduce transactional barriers to U.S. food exports, both of which will be welcomed by agriculture and business groups as a step in the right direction. That’s why business groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Foreign Trade Council urged the Administration earlier this month to support expanded travel and agricultural trade opportunities. The AFL-CIO’s last convention approved a resolution in support of ending the travel ban. Both business groups and labor recognize that it’s in our interest to increase travel and expand exports to Cuba.
5. It’s in the national security interest of the United States.
Within the last year, a group retired generals and flag officers called on the President to relax restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba.
6. Respected faith, human rights and foreign policy groups support the change
Progressive groups, the religious community, academics, and the human rights community are vigorously pressing for policy change in a stronger, more visible way than in the past, and would be pleased to see the President do all he can to end the travel ban. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, U.S. Catholic Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Council of Churches and Church World Service, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many other groups that follow foreign policy and human rights support increasing engagement with the Cuban people.
7. Cuban Americans support travel for all Americans
Polls of Cuban Americans nation-wide, and Cuban-American registered voters in south Florida, confirm that the majority support ending the ban on travel to Cuba for all Americans. In a Bendixen & Associates poll taken in April 2009, two-thirds (67%) of Cuban and Cuban-American adults nationally support lifting travel restrictions for all Americans. Increasing purposeful travel is consistent with this view.
8. There is no downside in Florida
The conventional wisdom is that easing the travel ban will hurt the President in Florida. But in 2008, President Obama won Florida and carried Miami Dade County. With a pragmatic engagement-oriented message on Cuba, he actually won more Cuban-American support in Florida than did previous Democratic Presidential candidates, who took a more hardline position. In fact, there is no evidence that Democrats gain any advantage in Florida by taking a hardline on Cuba. Many Democratic candidates in Florida who adopted a more hardline position on Cuba in the 2010 mid-term lost their elections, due to the larger political climate.
9. It would demonstrate political strength and independence by the President
Moving confidently forward with Cuba travel and food sales regulations would fulfill the President’s principled call for a “new beginning” with Cuba which has to date gone unfulfilled. And it would make clear that the President will take principled positions, rather than backing down in the face of hardliners in the Congress. At the same time, failing to respond to Cuba’s release of more than 50 political prisoners and major economic reforms underway on the island undermine the President’s credibility not only in Havana, but among allies who will see the President’s inaction as a foreign policy cowardice caused by nothing more than domestic politics.
