US Congress passes bill making travel to Cuba easier

WASHINGTON, CMC



The United States House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a huge spending bill altering the shape of US-Cuba policy and easing travel to the Caribbean island by Americans.



Lawmakers said the bill would ease family travel restrictions by not funding enforcement.



The 2009 budget, which passed the House on a 245-178 vote, also contained several revisions to Cuba policy that signal a trend toward further engagement with Cuba, a momentum that could lead to the end of more sanctions, analysts said.



The budget bill was passed the House days after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a senior Republican on the panel issued a strongly worded report that said the embargo\'s isolation of Cuba wasn\'t working.



Indiana Senator Richard Lugar recommended increased engagement in drug trafficking and migration but fell short of advocating a wholesale lifting of the US trade embargo against the Communist country.



A group of well-known diplomats and academics at Washington-based think tank, The Brookings Institute, were also expected to issue a report Thursday that also calls for more dialogue with Cuba.



A few Black representatives in Congress met Wednesday night with Cuban diplomats in Washington to discuss the state of US-Cuba relations.



\'\'All of these pieces have to be viewed in the aggregate: it\'s clearly a trend,\'\' said Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Bill Delahunt, who sponsored the bill that would allow Americans to travel to Cuba.



“The trend is to engage incrementally, and travel is a centrepiece of that,” he said.



“There is a momentum that\'s evolving here,\'\' Delahunt added.



The latest movement toward freeing travel to Cuba is an offshoot of President Barack Obama\'s campaign promise to allow Cuban-Americans to visit their families on the island more frequently.



Former President George W Bush changed the rules that allowed people to visit Cuba once a year, limiting those visits to every three years.



\'\'I have been working on this issue for a very, very, very long time,\'\' said Congressman José E. Serrano, a New York Democrat, who chairs the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government.



“Now I am Chairman of a committee that appropriates those dollars, and I can do something about it,\'\' he added.



\'\'The American people do not see Cuba as a threat,\'\' Serrano continued, “and they can\'t figure out why we do not deal with them.\'\'



A number of countries, including Caribbean Community (CARICOM) nations, have also been calling on Washington to lift the trade and economic embargo against Havana.