Can You Still Go To Cuba? Trump To Announce Plans To Tighten Travel

If you were planning on lounging at an Old Havana hotel anytime soon, you might want to start looking at other destinations. President Donald Trump will announce on Friday plans to tighten restrictions on Cuba, turning back former President Barack Obama’s reforms, CNN reported Thursday. Trump will also sign a directive aimed at changing course on Cuba policy.

Trump wants to limit American travel to the island and ban Americans from transacting with the business arm of the Cuban military called Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA). This wing of the military controls many businesses, especially ones geared towards tourists. The Miami Herald reported Monday, that the GAESA may control as much as 60 percent of the Cuban economy.

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The administration is attempting to shake up the Cuban government, which has a track record of human rights violations. The staunch policy Trump took during the campaign is coming to fruition and mimics Cuba hardliners like Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

“The policy the Trump administration is announcing regarding Cuba based on President Trump’s core conviction that what the Cuban exile community is asking for is right and just,” the White House said in a written statement to Politico Thursday. “The oppressors of the Cuban people are the Cuban government who have increased repression on the island against dissidents and Ladies in White since reestablishing diplomatic relations. Prior to that, it was not clear to some if the Obama policy toward Cuba would work; today it is clear that the Obama policy toward Cuba does not.”

Trump’s new policies will be similar to the old policy of embargo, which some critics say wasn’t a productive strategy of shifting power in Cuba.

“Despite the assertions of its advocates, the embargo’s harshness has never correlated with improvements in human rights,” said Christopher Sabatini an op-ed in the New York Times Thursday. “The worst crackdown in modern Cuban history was in April 2003, when the Cuban government rounded up 75 human rights activists and independent journalists and sentenced them to an average of 20 years in prison. That was precisely when the embargo was at its tightest, under George W. Bush’s administration, when even Cuban-Americans were restricted in how often they could travel to the island to visit relatives or send them money.”

Though travel to Cuba is technically banned by federal law, “educational” trips were allowed as part of Obama’s thawing of relations with Cuba. Those trips were intended as a sort of an education cultural exchange, but there wasn’t much oversight of individual trips, according to Politico.

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Trump’s directive will include enforced oversight, travelers will have to keep strict itineraries and track of who the pay. Trump also wants the Department of Treasury to regularly audit U.S. business dealings with Cuba to ensure that the Cuban military isn’t getting any American dollars.

Trump’s policy won’t be quite as strict as before, visas can still be purchased and the U.S. will keep its embassy open.