“The simple basis of our policy is that by loosening these restrictions, we are better able to engage with the Cuban people, to support them and to build bridges between our two countries”, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., adding that travelers could “even use frequent flyer miles”. “But this policy change is about more than just travel and trade-it’s about opening Cuba to new ideas, new values, and improved human rights that our 50 year old policy of exclusion could not achieve”.
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Plenty of activities could fall under that category, and the White House suggested it wouldn’t be splitting hairs. In the past, chartered flights and routes through third countries were the only way for Americans to get to Cuba.
Funds may also be transferred from a bank outside the United States, pass through USA financial institutions and then be transferred to a bank outside the United States without worry about the stiff penalties of the past.
“At every stage in this process of rebuilding the U.S.-Cuba relationship, the increase of people-to-people connections has been at the core”, he said.
On Monday afternoon he will attend a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team. Numerous existing tours have evolved into a formulaic itinerary that can be heavily influenced by Cuban state-run companies, involving a relatively closed circle of architects, performers, economists and organic farmers who cycle through US tour groups, often receiving money for the visits. Despite Cuban leaders’ view of such meetings as interference in the island’s internal affairs, Mr Rhodes said there was no reason to believe the government would block any invitees from participating.
Obama, who will travel with his wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha, will be the first USA president to visit Havana since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.
Marti, a writer and independence hero beloved by Cubans of all political hues, lived in NY for years, battling for Cuba’s independence from colonial Spain from exile. “The message to most Americans that the travel restrictions are really loosening will come across more clearly”. “This is a big deal because it kind of undoes a fundamental plank of the Cuban embargo, which was to prevent Cuba from accessing the dollar and the USA financial system”, said Augusto Maxwell, a Miami-based lawyer who heads the Akerman law firm’s Cuba practice.
Beruff, a homebuilder from Manatee County, in a statement to the media today said Obama has done a awful job negotiating with Cuba in his bid to normalize relations with the communist nation.
Congressional Republicans were quick to criticize Mr. Obama’s announcement as a concession to the Castro regime.
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“It must be so that it can generate hard currency revenues in order to import critical products such as food and medicine which are exempted from the embargo”, he said.
