Obama wants to ease Cuba family travel

Source: Associated Press

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"Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Tuesday called the Bush administration's decision to tighten restrictions on relatives of Cubans who want to visit the island or send money home strategic blunders and promised to reverse the measures if elected.

The Illinois senator leapt into the long-running and often bruising debate over U.S.-Cuba policy with an op-ed piece published in The Miami Herald.

"The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways," Obama wrote.

"Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made grand gestures to that end while strategically blundering when it comes to actually advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba," he added."





Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070821/ap_on_el_pr/obama_cuba

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Our main goal: Freedom in Cuba (By Barack Obama)


http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/209864.html

Increased contact and trade cause even the most repressive governments to ease international tension and domestic restrictions. That results in more freedom within the repressed country.

In the case of Eastern Europe travel wasn't limited to family and exiles. Obama's policy is just the opposite - he endorses restricting freedom of non Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba.

Lipstick on a pig, I'm afraid.

Until they kick us out for overloading their medical system.

If we want to "make them us for our freedoms," let's show them how free we are. If we can't travel freely, no matter where we want to go, how "free" are we? It's pretty bad when Castro lets Cubans come here, but our government does not let us go there. And then we brag that we are "free." That's pure 1984.

my stinkin' government to tell me where I can or can't go.

trade with and travel to Cuba should be scrapped.

Source: Miami Herald

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is calling for ''unrestricted rights'' for Cuban Americans to visit and send money to family in Cuba, just days before his first pilgrimage to Little Havana as a presidential candidate.

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''Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island,'' Obama wrote in an opinion column published in today's Miami Herald. ``Accordingly, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.''

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In 2004, the Bush administration restricted Cuban Americans to visiting their relatives on the island once every three years and capped remittances at $100 per month. Democratic efforts to reverse the policy have been unsuccessful, though Clinton and Obama voted in 2005 to facilitate family travel to Cuba in humanitarian circumstances.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd is co-sponsoring an even broader bill allowing any American citizen to visit Cuba. ''We must open the flood gates,'' Dodd said recently.

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Related op/ed from Obama in today's Miami Herald..

-Our main goal: Freedom in Cuba-
http://www.miamiherald.com/851/story/209864.html

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Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/209885.html

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So, Mr Obama thinks that Cuban migrants in the US deserve ''unrestricted rights'' re: freedom to travel, but US born Americans don't.

More of the same w/this approach.

Just another manipulation of the 'git tough on Castro' fund raising/pandering campaign that is prerequisite in S Florida. :(

sooooooo f_____g petty and childish. What exactly has it accomplished? Someone please tell me!

Lots of money pouring to politicians on both sides of this issue.

Maintaining such a policy maintains the well financed fight over it.

Why would US politicians want to end or resolve such a campaign cash cow?

The status quo prevails.

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We need to end the current campaign financing system in the US. Cuba policy is an excellent example of why.

to corruptible politicians is vast, and the U.S. taxpayers have had to bear the financial burden for all this crap for decades. What a damned shame. It all works against us, and we have to pay big bucks to finance it.

Truly ugly, dishonest, childish, stupid.

Obama's step forward, as small as it is, should be the groundbreaker that sets the pace. Now that the door has been opened, it should never be shut again.

ALL Americans should NEVER be banned from traveling to Cuba. This is NOT Cuba's wish. Our own government has done this to us for political reasons.

<snip>

"The leading Democratic presidential contenders Tuesday staked out contrasting positions on family travel to Cuba, injecting the island dear to hundreds of thousands of South Florida voters into a race mostly consumed with the war in Iraq.

In an opinion column in The Miami Herald, Sen. Barack Obama assailed President Bush's policy -- which restricts Cuban Americans to visiting relatives once every three years and sending only $100 per month -- as "strategic blundering when it comes to advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba."

Rival Sen. Hillary Clinton said she would continue the Bush administration's hard-line stance, for the most part. Clinton's campaign said she agrees that exiles should be able to freely send money to their relatives but said she does not favor "any wholesale, broad changes" to the travel restrictions until Fidel Castro falls. Clinton did vote with Obama in 2005 -- unsuccessfully -- to ease restrictions on family travel in "humanitarian cases."

"She supports the embargo and our current policy toward Cuba, and until it is clear what type of political winds may come with a new government -- if there is a new government -- we cannot talk about changes to U.S. policy," Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said.

Two of the major Republican candidates, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, said Obama's proposal would bolster the Castro regime."

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