Cuba air charters can't escape politics
Companies that ferry travelers to Cuba are often targets of those who
want to limit travel to the Communist island.
BY MIMI WHITEFIELD
mwhitefield@MiamiHerald.com
Ronelvys Gonzalez managed to balance a flat screen TV, a bicycle, baby
stroller, playpen and bags of plastic-wrapped clothing on a single
luggage cart as he waited to check in for a recent charter flight to
Cuba at Miami International Airport.
He lives in Perrine but his wife, 4-month-old son, aunts and other
relatives live in Havana. The $2,500 worth of merchandise he had
assembled was for them. While he wasn't too happy about the excess
baggage fees he was expecting to pay, his real worry is proposed
legislation that would put a crimp in growing travel between the United
States and Cuba.
For the air charter companies that ferry passengers to and from Cuba,
his dilemma is their dilemma.
They've seen their business grow briskly since the Obama administration
began allowing Cuban-Americans to make unlimited family visits in 2009.
And new rules announced this year will allow a broader range of
Americans to travel to Cuba and open up new gateway cities such as Fort
Lauderdale and Atlanta that can now handle Cuba travel.
"There is no logical basis for arguing for the restrictions any more on
a foreign policy basis,'' said Bob Guild, vice president of Marazul
Charters, which offers service to Cuba from Miami and New York.
Travel to Cuba has long been a polarizing issue in the Cuban-American
community, and the handful of companies that have been handling charters
to the island have been a magnet for lawsuits — and laws that would
limit travel to Cuba — for most of their existence.
The latest proposals to crack down on travel come from South Florida
Republican Congressmen Mario-Diaz Balart and David Rivera. They have
proposed separate bills that would roll back regulations on travel to
Cuba to the more restrictive policies of former President George W. Bush.
Those rules limited family visits by Cuban-Americans to once every three
years, only allowed visits to members of the immediate family — not
aunts, uncles and cousins, and set a ceiling on remittances of $1,200 a
year.
If the legislation becomes law, "it would mean I won't be able to see my
son grow up,'' said Gonzalez as he waited to check his baggage. "I could
only see my child once every three years.''
Rivera's bill also would stop people-to-people trips that allow travel
by a wider range of Americans if they take tours designed to foster
exchanges with ordinary Cubans.
The congressman, who began his fight to limit travel to Cuba when he was
a state legislator, insists that travel throws an economic life line to
the Castro regime.
He also has filed a separate bill, now in the Judiciary Committee, that
makes exiles ineligible for the Cuban Adjustment Act if they return to
Cuba before they become U.S. citizens — a process that generally takes
five years.
The 1966 law was designed to provide a path to residency and citizenship
for Cubans who couldn't return to the island because of political
persecution. Now those who apply can have their status adjusted after a
year in the United States, obtaining residency and becoming eligible for
Medicaid, Medicare, welfare and other benefits.
Under Rivera's proposal, he said, "you can't travel back or you lose
your residency.'' People who come here and apply for the Cuban
Adjustment Act, claiming persecution, and then immediately want to go
back and forth are abusing the system, he said.
Rivera's bill is "mean-spirited,'' said Vivian Mannerud, chief executive
and founder of Coral Gables-based Airline Brokers. "They can't stop
travelers any other way, so they want to scare them.''
But Rivera said he has heard from many constituents who are fed up "with
the abuse and manipulation of existing laws.'' He said his desire to cut
back on Cuban-American travel is also motivated by stopping those who
are abusing the concept of family reunification.
"Many people in the community have recounted instances of travel for
purposes other than family reunification, such as attending parties or
engaging in black market commercial activity,'' he said.
Anecdotally, Cuban-Americans talk about friends and neighbors who have
gone to the island for beach vacations, relatively inexpensive plastic
surgery, or to participate in Santeria rituals. And there are travelers
whose cartloads of merchandise are intended to sell on the streets of
Havana rather than for family gifts.
Judith Iglesias, a customer service clerk from Kendall who expects to
visit her family in Santa Clara this month, said she knows that some
people abuse the system with frequent travel that has nothing to do with
bringing a family together. "That's not the case of my family,'' she said.
It takes time to accumulate products such as clothing, vitamins, adult
diapers and the dietary supplements Iglesias takes to her 92-year-old
grandmother, she explained. "We have to save month by month. Everybody
needs something.''
Iglesias, who arrived in the United States in 1997, said she wanted to
make one thing very clear: "I don't want them to take these trips away.''
The charter operators point to the numbers of travelers as a reflection
of the true sentiment of the community. Last year, some 320,000
travelers departed from MIA and charter operators estimate the number
will top 400,000 this year.
"Cuban-Americans are voting with their feet,' said Xiomara
Almaguer-Levy, who heads Xael Charters. "It's like a referendum on the
issue."
After Diaz-Balart introduced his bill, Tessie Aral, president of ABC
Charters and a resident of Diaz-Balart's district, began collecting
signatures for a petition requesting a town hall meeting.
"We wanted him to explain to his constituents why this was good for
them,'' Aral said.
The next time she was in Washington she went to Diaz-Balart's office to
present the petition, which had about 1,500 signatures, but was
rebuffed. A staffer presented her with an email that said: "The office
has a policy of not meeting with individuals or entities that conduct
business with totalitarian regimes."
"Do they meet with American Airlines, JetBlue, the Catholic Archdiocese,
Crowley, Cargill, Perdue chicken?" Aral asked. (American Airlines and
JetBlue lease aircraft to the charter companies, and U.S. commercial
airlines pay fees to Cuba when they fly over the island en route to
Latin America and the Caribbean. Crowley Maritime, Cargill and Perdue
have done business with Cuba under exceptions to the U.S. trade embargo
against Cuba.)
"[The charter companies] are an easier target, maybe,'' said Ira
Kurzban, a Miami attorney who has represented several of the companies.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/11/v-fullstory/2402379/cuba-air-charters-cant-escape.html
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