SUN EDITORIAL:

Opening doors to Cuba

Time is right for U.S. to ease travel restrictions to island for all Americans

Saturday, April 4, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Every so often, a hard-line position taken for years by the U.S. government on a foreign policy issue will soften because of a shift in public attitudes. Trade and travel agreements with China and normalized relations with Vietnam are but two examples.

Evidence is growing that U.S. attitudes have also begun to change about Cuba, the island nation that became a headache for the U.S. after dictator Fidel Castro rose to power in 1959. That tension reached a dangerous peak with the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. discovered Soviet missiles on the island and successfully demanded that they be removed.

Nearly half a century later, Cuba no longer poses a threat to our national security and can’t count on the former Soviet Union for assistance as it did in the past. Just last year Castro, beset by failing health, handed over political control of the communist nation to his younger brother. These realities have led to changing American attitudes about Cuba.

Change became evident last month when President Barack Obama signed a spending bill that enables Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives on the island once a year instead of once every three years.

A bipartisan group of senators, seizing on that momentum, introduced a bill Tuesday that would allow all Americans to travel to Cuba except in cases of war or threats to travelers. The legislation is backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau and other industry groups that advocate free trade with Cuba.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., a co-sponsor of the bill, said Americans can travel to communist China and Vietnam, but the Cuba policy “punishes Americans by prohibiting their right to travel. Further, this policy has done nothing to weaken the Castro regime.”

Dorgan’s points are difficult to dispute.

Congress and the Obama administration should support Dorgan’s legislation because the travel restrictions have outlived their usefulness. Ending those restrictions could also be an important step toward resuming free trade with Cuba and enhancing the image of the United States in Latin America.

Discussion: 3 comments so far…

By Bigsky007

4/4/09 at 12:44 p.m.

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Written to then Presidential Candidate Obama early on:
They will say that you will alienate the Cuban voters in Florida, a State that you will need if you are to win. Senator, an appeal needs to be made to the Cuban voters. To stand in the way of US pursuit of policies that would lead to improved relationships between our two countries is selfish. The Cuban voters are patently dishonest in, from the safety of US soil, stand as an eternal block to improved conditions, which stand to improve the lots of the people in Cuba, who don't have the platform from which to state their own case. To be willing to leave their fellow Cubans on the Island in their present state forever is reprehensible in our view. The abhorrent moral aspect, for twenty million Cubans, of this situation is never addressed. They have been trapped in a tug of war for some fifty years. That there is no relief in sight for them is apparently of little concern to those voters of Cuban descent, who are snug and comfort in Miami. Another aspect of the Cuban situation is that of commonality of cultures. We have much more in common with Cubans than we have with Viet Nam and North Korea, yet whose rings have Bush been kissing since he's been in office?

Furthermore, it's high time, we feel, that what's best for this country be given priority over the tunnel vision views of a handful of diehards from Cuba and any other country, for that matter. This country is beginning to lose its vision of itself. Foolish litmus tests for candidates, such as we now see on Cuba, are going lead to the unraveling of this country at its very core. It's past time we take another look at our policies towards our brothers to the south just a few miles away.
By KillerB

4/4/09 at 8:14 p.m.

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Bigsky -- Amen.

It's way past time that embargo was lifted. The U.S. has partnered with far worst than Castro. Marcos, Pinochet, Duvalier for starters.
By stevem

4/4/09 at 9:22 p.m.

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castro is too old to be considered any kind of real threat and the tourism would be a huge boost to our national economy. maybe not vegas directly, but there would be a great amount of people from florida going to cuba and that would be a huge boom to that area and they might spend some of that money here in vegas.