Treasury tightens trips to Cuba amid complaints

Posted on Wednesday, 09.12.12

Treasury tightens trips to Cuba amid complaints

The Treasury Department is tightening controls on Americans traveling to
Cuba after complaints of too much tourism.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

An Obama administration "revision" of the regulations on
"people-to-people" trips to Cuba, after months of complaints about too
much salsa dancing and too many mojitos, has begun to disrupt the tours
for American travelers.

The U.S. Treasury Department this summer has renewed only a handful of
the one-year licenses required for the tours, and dozens more renewals
are pending, said Pedro Gonzalez Munne, a Miami businessman who monitors
travel to Cuba.

Several of the entities awaiting renewals already have cancelled or
delayed planned people-to-people tours. And Cuba Insight, the New
Rochelle, N.Y., agency that drew some of the complaints, says it laid
off 22 employees after its license lapsed.

Other licensees may have to delay tours planned for the coming winter
tourist season, Cuba travel industry officials noted, although some of
the people-to-people licenses issued over the past year remain valid
until this spring.

An estimated 10,000 Americans visited Cuba in the past year under the
140 licenses for people-to-people travel issued by Treasury's Office of
Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in charge of enforcing U.S. economic
sanctions on Cuba and other nations. Cuban-Americans travel under
separate family reunification licenses

The people-to-people trips, akin to cultural or educational travel, are
required by law to foster "meaningful interactions" between the visitors
and Cubans. The term is not clearly defined, although OFAC says it
clearly rules out tourism.

Jeff Braunger, OFAC program manager for Cuba Travel Licensing, said his
agency "revised" its criteria for granting people-to-people licenses in
May in part "because of reports we received concerning travel under the
licenses."

"These changes provide clarity to applicants and licensees seeking
renewals, facilitate OFAC's review of license applications, and help to
deter abuses by licensees," Braunger wrote in an email to El Nuevo
Herald. He gave no details on the abuses.

OFAC spokesman John Sullivan added that his agency is working to quickly
resolve renewal applications that were returned for additional
information "but not necessarily rejected." He declined to detail how
many were approved, returned or rejected.

Agency officials also have privately told some licensees that staff and
budget shortages are adding to the delays in processing the renewals.

Supporters of people-to-people trips to Cuba say they improve
understanding between the two nations and put money in the pockets of
private citizens on the island, allowing them to break any dependency on
the government.

Opponents say they fill the coffers of the communist government, which
controls the overwhelming majority of the island's tourism industry, and
amount to guided tours for Cuban government propaganda.

The Detroit Free Press reported last year that visitors on one Insight
Cuba tour attended a music show celebrating Fidel Castro's 85th birthday
in Havana's Karl Marx Theater. Insight Cuba President Tom Popper was
unavailable to comment on this story, aides said.

Approved by the U.S. Congress in 1992, the people-to-people trips to
Cuba were broadly allowed by President Bill Clinton, halted by George W.
Bush because of alleged abuses and then reopened by Barack Obama in
January 2011.

Obama's decision unleashed a stampede to arrange and promote trips that
raised concerns even among strong supporters of the people-to-people
travel who feared that blatant abuses might kill the entire program.

The luxury travel firm Abercrombie & Kent quickly sold out 13 tours, at
about $6,000 per person per week, after it advertised salsa dancing and
rum-laced mojitos. It had to postpone the offerings after running into
license problems.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fl., complained the visitors were meeting with
government officials and even the daughter of ruler Raúl Castro,
sexologist Mariela Castro, and branded the trips as an "indoctrination
of Americans."

Rubio blocked Obama's nominee as Assistant Secretary of State for
Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson, until March, after what his
office described in a statement as "months of negotiations with the
administration in the hopes of cracking down on abuses of the
people-to-people Cuba travel policy."

Two months later, OFAC unveiled what it called "revisions" of the
regulations for the people-to-people travel that effectively tightened
the license application procedure and made it lengthier and more complex.

U.S. residents on people-to-people trips to Cuba were always required to
travel in groups, not individually, to stick to itineraries arranged by
the license holders that leave little time for tourist activities, such
as visits to the island's beaches.

The revised guidelines for license applications now require minutely
detailed itineraries, and explanations of how each and every planned
activity or meeting will result in "meaningful interactions" with
Cubans. Even more details and justifications are required when the
meetings are with government officials.

Joe Scarpaci, an emeritus professor at Virginia Tech and executive
director of the Center for the Study of Cuban Culture and Economy, said
his 17,000-word application for renewal of his people-to-people license
was returned with a request for more details.

He re-filed it at 25,000 words, Scarpaci added, and became one of the
four licensees known to have been renewed this summer.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/12/v-fullstory/2997316/treasury-tightens-trips-to-cuba.html