WASHINGTON — Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez announced measures Saturday that could ease travel to the island for Cuban Americans.
As of Jan. 1, those born in Cuba but living abroad will no longer need a qualification stamp in their passports before they can travel to the island, Rodriguez said at a meeting of Cuban Americans hosted by the Cuban Embassy on the Howard University campus.
“That’s a big thing, huge. It will eliminate a lot of paperwork,” said Tessie Aral, president of Miami-based ABC Charters, which has long handled travel arrangements to Cuba.
“The Cuban government is giving more privileges to us as Cubans than before,” she said.
There are an estimated 800,000 people with a Cuban passport abroad, who currently need authorization granted by a consulate to travel to the island, Agence France Presse reported.
In his remarks in Washington, Rodriguez also said that children born abroad of Cuban parents can now apply for Cuban citizenship and that Cubans who have left the island by illegal means – by raft, for example – will be welcome back for visits. There will still be a restriction for those who entered the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay illegally to get to the United States.
A fourth change will allow Cuban Americans to enter and leave from Cuba on recreational boats as long as they travel through certain designated marinas such as Marina Hemingway in Havana.
Cuba is opening as the U.S. is shutting down travel opportunities for Cubans, he said.
President Donald Trump has outlined a new Cuba policy that will make it more difficult to travel and do business with Cuba, but new regulations haven’t been issued yet.
A recent reduction of consular officers at the U.S. Embassy in Havana also will make it harder for Cubans on the island to visit their U.S. relatives.
Last year, 428,000 Cuban Americans visited the island. So far this year there have been more than 320,000 Cuban-American visitors to Cuba, said Rodriguez.
The withdrawal of about 60 percent of U.S. diplomats in Cuba came after the United States said Cuba failed to protect its personnel from mysterious auditory attacks that damaged hearing and impaired their health.
Rodriguez again denied Saturday that Cuba had anything to do with the “so-called sonic attacks.”
Because of the shortage of consular personnel in Havana to process visas, Cubans seeking immigrant visas must now travel to Bogota, Colombia, for their interviews. Cubans who want to visit the United States must travel to third countries for visa processing.
However, Rodriguez said such trips are prohibitive for many Cubans because of the distance.
He said it was “unacceptable and immoral” that the United States would allow political differences between the two countries” to damage the Cuban people.
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