#us-cuba relations

[tearsofrefugees]

ICE Put 120 Cubans on a Flight to Havana in Major Deportation Ramp-Up

The large-scale deportation marks a turning point in U.S.-Cuba relations

[newstfionline]

U.S. Halt in Visa Services Leaves Cuban Families in Limbo

By Ernesto Londoño, NY Times, Oct. 5, 2017

Cubans have long regarded emigrating to the United States as something of a birthright derived from the privations they endured as a result of sanctions that Washington has imposed on Cuba for decades.

Last week, for the first time in decades, the United States effectively shut down the immigration pipeline from the island as it sharply reduced its staff at the embassy in Havana in response to mysterious ailments there, leaving in limbo many of the more than 100,000 Cubans seeking to reunite with relatives.

The decision to indefinitely suspend visa processing at the embassy--one of the busiest consular posts in the region--could mean that the United States will fail to honor its obligations under a 1994 deal that requires the admission of at least 20,000 Cuban immigrants each year, current and former American diplomats say. The accord was reached in an effort to stem an exodus by Cubans who took to the seas in rafts by the thousands in the 1990s trying to reach Florida.

The halt in visa services comes roughly nine months after Washington ended its “wet foot, dry foot” policy. That policy, which required Cubans caught trying to reach the United States by sea to return home but allowed those who make it onto American soil to stay, had in recent years enabled an additional tens of thousands of Cubans to move to the United States.

The sudden suspension of legal pathways for Cubans to settle in the United States could set off a new migration surge, experts in both countries said, particularly if Cuba experiences an economic downturn.

“It doesn’t give them an escape,” said Vicki Huddleston, a Cuba expert who ran the United States diplomatic mission in Havana from 1999 to 2002. “I think it risks another massive migration. You have folks who really want to leave, and at least that was a possibility while we were issuing immigrant visas.”

As of November 2016, there were 106,351 Cubans awaiting immigrant visas, according to the State Department, which did not respond to questions about how it intended to address this caseload given the reduced staffing level in Havana.

Cuban Americans and their relatives on the island, many of whom have spent years waiting for visa interview appointments, were despondent after learning that consular services in Havana had been suspended.

Irene Hierrezuelo, 50, had been so anxious in recent weeks about her Oct. 2 appointment at the embassy that she barely slept at night and took pills to steady her nerves. She was counting the days to be reunited with her daughter, Sulay Falconet, 30, who moved to Houston in 2012, and to embrace her 3-year-old grandson, Jeremy. The yearning to be reunited became unbearable, she said, after Ms. Falconet’s home was flooded last month when Hurricane Harvey battered Houston.

“I feel so powerless,” Ms. Hierrezuelo said in a telephone interview over the weekend, breaking into sobs. “The only thing I have in life is my daughter and my grandson.”

Ms. Falconet, who works at a car dealership in Houston, said she had been looking forward to holidays and birthdays once again being joyous events rather than reminders of her mother’s solitude.

“To be honest, I’m very afraid,” she said. “No one gives you answers.”

The news also devastated Carmen Miranda, a doctor who secured a United States visa in 2015 after defecting from a medical mission run by the Cuban government in Brazil. Ms. Miranda, 50, was allowed to sponsor her husband and younger daughter for visas at the American consulate in Rio de Janeiro.

But her older daughter, Mariela Quiñones, had to return to Havana and wait a few years to join the family, because new American immigrants can simultaneously sponsor only children who are under age 21. Ms. Quiñones was 23 when her parents and sister moved to Miami.

“I don’t want to spend another birthday without you guys,” Ms. Quiñones told her mother in a text message over the weekend. “My 26th I’m already going to spend without you, but I don’t want to spend my 27th.”

Ms. Miranda, a social worker who takes care of elderly people in Miami, sought to cheer up her daughter.

“Sweetie, I don’t know about this one, but your next birthday we’ll spend sailing on a cruise or at Disney,” Ms. Miranda texted back. “You have to trust and think positive and you’ll see at any moment we’ll get the surprise.”

Yet Ms. Miranda said the surprise they had long yearned for now felt more like holding out for a miracle. Before last week, she would call a phone number for visa inquiries each week for updates on her daughter’s petition. Officials kept telling her they were still processing cases filed in 2010, but while Ms. Quiñones was nowhere near the front of the line, at least the family knew the pipeline was flowing.

“I can’t get over this,” Ms. Miranda said. “Imagine the pain a mother feels when she longs for a child.”

Juan Manuel Iglesias, 53, can relate. A Miami welder who has lived in the United States since 1997, he has spent four years trying to get a visa for his wife, Tania González Sánchez, 46, an optometrist from the central Cuban city of Cienfuegos. Immigration officials requested more evidence about the relationship after Ms. González had a visa interview in May 2015, but the couple has yet to hear back.

Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, said on Tuesday that the Cuban Embassy in Washington would also struggle to provide consular services to its citizens as a result of the State Department’s expulsion of 15 Cuban diplomats. The new staffing levels at the embassies in Washington and Havana, Mr. Rodríguez said, will leave each consular section staffed by just one officer.

Carlos Alzugaray, a scholar and former Cuban diplomat who lives in Havana, said the Trump administration’s decisions threatened to derail the good will and trust that the Cold War antagonists had begun to rebuild since diplomatic relations were restored in late 2014.

“It affects academic, cultural, educational and environmental exchanges,” Mr. Alzugaray said. “It’s like a furtive rupture in relations without closing embassies.”

[dreowyn]

U.S. diplomats in Cuba have brain injuries from sonic attacks

U.S. diplomats in Cuba have brain injuries from sonic attacks

Here’s another rotten egg Obama left for President Trump. On July 20, 2015, three months after the Obama administration removed Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism, the United States and Cuba normalized their relations by reestablishing diplomatic relations and reopening embassies in their respective capitals, Washington , D.C. and Havana. Beginning in late 2016, however, the…

View On WordPress

[whitetoque]

Ag Groups Disappointed In President Trump's Cuba Announcement - AgriMarketing.com

Ag Groups Disappointed In President Trump’s Cuba Announcement – AgriMarketing.com

"The Illinois Beef Association, Illinois Corn Growers Association, Illinois Pork Producers Association and Illinois Soybean Growers issued this joint statement following President Trump’s announcement today that limits trade and travel opportunities with Cuba. Our farmer members are discouraged to hear that President Trump has decided to roll back the advancements we have made in agricultural…

View On WordPress

[eoanews]

Pres. Trump Announces New Cuba Policy

[newstfionline]

Trump Considers Rolling Back Obama’s Opening With Cuba

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis, NY Times, May 31, 2017

WASHINGTON--President Trump is considering reversing major pieces of the Obama administration’s opening with Cuba and reinstating limits on travel and commerce, citing human rights abuses by the Castro government as justification for a more punitive approach.

Mr. Trump wants to announce the changes in Miami as early as June and deliver on a campaign promise that remains a cherished demand for the politically conservative Cuban-American exile community, according to aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But he has not made a final decision on the steps he will take because of internal disagreements within his administration over how far to go in unwinding one of President Barack Obama’s most significant foreign policy achievements.

Clamping down on engagement with Cuba would be a high-profile way for Mr. Trump to showcase a stark break with his predecessor and to fulfill a pledge, delivered during a speech in Miami in September, to a crucial constituency that disproportionately supported him. It would also enable the president to reward the loyalty of Cuban-American lawmakers who have been agitating for a harder line on Cuba, including Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, both Republicans of Florida.

But as the White House has sought to formulate a series of steps for Mr. Trump to announce, a split has emerged over rolling back a policy that many senior officials privately agree has been an improvement on the Cold War dynamic that shaped relations with Cuba in the past. In addition to the revival of diplomatic relations for the first time in a half-century and liberalized rules for trade, travel and commerce, the new approach has paved the way for cooperation in intelligence-sharing, drug interdiction, scientific research and a host of other areas.

“A lot of the bureaucracy has been resisting a complete rollback” of Mr. Obama’s policy, said Christopher Sabatini, a Latin America specialist and executive director of Global Americans, a research organization. “Trump is the ‘Art of the Deal’ guy, and there’s no deal to be had here if they reverse the entire policy.”

The dilemma is a familiar one for the president, who built his campaign and political persona around bold, contrarian policy pronouncements like building a wall on the southern border, instituting a Muslim ban and canceling the Paris climate accord, only to see his hopes for quick and simple action scuttled by thorny questions of law and policy, and resistance from the business community.

As the White House labored in March to corral Republican votes for an unpopular health care overhaul measure, Mr. Diaz-Balart asked for assurances from Mr. Trump that he would hold to the hard line on Cuba he laid out in his campaign. The Florida Republican supported the measure and has played an influential role in shaping the new Cuba policy.

“It is my duty to advocate for the issues that are important to my constituents, and I will not apologize for using every available avenue to effectively resolve them,” Mr. Diaz-Balart said in a statement.

Among the measures the Trump administration is considering are proposals pressed by Mr. Rubio and Mr. Diaz-Balart to block transactions between American companies and firms that have ties to the Cuban military. Such a restriction could have far-reaching consequences for existing deals, such as the one struck by Starwood Hotels and Resorts last year to manage hotels in Cuba--one of which is owned by the military conglomerate Gaviota--and effectively freeze future ones, since the military in Cuba has a hand in virtually every element of the economy.

“This is a return to the old playbook of creating ambiguity and uncertainty so that nobody knows what is permissible and what isn’t, and it would add another level of legal exposure to doing business in Cuba,” said Robert L. Muse, a Washington lawyer who specializes in American law regarding Cuba. “It would add one more obstacle to the obstacle course, which is already pretty complex.”

Mr. Trump, according to people close to the discussions, is also considering tightening restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba that were eased last year on the eve of Mr. Obama’s historic trip to Havana. The new policy allows Americans who are making educational or cultural trips to Cuba to initiate their own travel there without special permission from the United States government and without a licensed tour company.

Reversing it, or intensifying enforcement to require travelers to show evidence that their trips are legal, would probably slow the recent influx of American tourism to Cuba to a trickle, leaving airlines that have started direct flights there with fewer customers to serve.

The changes are far more limited than those sought by Cuba hard-liners, who have pressed Mr. Trump to reimpose all the sanctions lifted by the Obama administration and cut off diplomatic relations unless Cuba quickly schedules democratic elections, institutes an independent judiciary and shows progress on settling American financial claims and returning American fugitives to the United States.

In seeking to justify his changes on human rights grounds, Mr. Trump would be taking an approach far different from the one he has applied to other parts of the world, where he and his advisers have viewed human rights considerations as an impediment to trade and partnerships that create jobs in the United States.

“Given their complete lack of concern for human rights around the world, it would be a tragic irony if the Trump administration uses that to justify policies that harm the Cuban people and restrict the freedom of Americans to travel and do business where they please,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama who negotiated the 2014 announcement. “It’s clear that the Cuban and American people want to move forward, and nothing can change that reality.”

[newstfionline]

Cuba faces renewed tensions with U.S., but without Fidel Castro, its field marshal

By Nick Miroff, Washington Post, November 27, 2016

HAVANA--Fidel Castro once called George W. Bush a “functional illiterate.” President Ronald Reagan was “the worst terrorist in the history of mankind,” Castro said, with ideas “from the Buffalo Bill era.”

Castro thrived on confrontation with U.S. leaders, and he almost surely would have enjoyed facing off against America’s next one. In his statement Saturday on Castro’s death, President-elect Donald Trump denounced him as “a brutal dictator,” and that’s the sort of dig that wouldn’t have gone unanswered in the past.

But brinkmanship and barb-throwing are not the forte of his successor, Raúl Castro, who replaced his elder sibling as president a decade ago. Raúl Castro, 85, has refrained from criticizing Trump and even sent congratulations after his win.

Raúl Castro’s plans to secure the legacy of his brother’s 1959 Cuban Revolution appear to be on a collision course with the incoming Trump administration, whose top members said Sunday that Cuba would have to make significant “changes” in order for the normalization path charted by President Obama to continue. Both Castros have long insisted they would never kneel to American pressure.

If tensions between Cuba and the United States ratchet up again under a Trump presidency, it would be a new stress test for Raúl Castro and his quieter, more austere leadership style. Cuba will enter the Trump era with Fidel Castro’s one-party socialist state firmly in command but without the supercharged politics and nationalist fervor he relied on to sustain it.

A return to more hostile relations with the United States could also bring a new crackdown in Cuba and further slow the pace of Raúl Castro’s modest liberalization measures at a time of stalling economic growth. Hard-liners in Cuba’s Communist Party would gladly take the country back to a simpler time, when the antagonism of the United States--not the failure of government policies--was to blame for the island’s problems, and the threat of attack, real or imagined, was used to justify authoritarian political control.

On Fox News Sunday, Reince Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, said, “There’s going to have to be some movement from Cuba in order to have a relationship with the United States.”

Castro would have to take steps to allow more political, economic and religious freedoms, Priebus said. “These things need to change in order to have open and free relationships, and that’s what President-elect Trump believes.”

Obama announced in December 2014 that the United States would reestablish diplomatic relations with Cuba, which were severed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. Obama insisted that engagement with Cuba, including fewer restrictions on U.S. travel and trade, would facilitate the type of long-term democratic changes Washington had failed to bring about during a half-century of punitive sanctions.

But Trump said during his campaign that Obama didn’t get a good “deal,” and Cuba must do more.

While only the U.S. Congress can lift the Cuba embargo, Trump could reverse many of the executive orders that have brought a surge of U.S. visitors here and a rush of new interest from U.S. companies.

If Trump moves to roll back those measures and attempts to apply more economic pressure, the Castro government could dig in.

Fidel Castro’s soaring rhetoric is no longer the soundtrack of Cuban public life. Raúl Castro delivers a speech every few months, choosing his words carefully and reading from a prepared text. A lifelong military man, he praises planning, modesty and preparation, and uses the word “improvisation” as a pejorative.

Those qualities helped facilitate the secret negotiations with the Obama administration on restoring relations, but they may not help him counter more aggressive language from President Trump. Raúl Castro doesn’t tweet, doesn’t give media interviews and shows no enthusiasm, unlike Fidel, for being in the spotlight. He could have a hard time leading younger Cubans back into the trenches of his older brother’s “anti-imperialism” with calls for more sacrifice and obedience.

Then again, Cuban national pride remains a powerful force on the island, and nothing stirs it like a perceived threat from a swaggering American leader, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a former Cuban intelligence analyst who teaches at the University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley.

“Even if there is no Fidel, do not underestimate the power of mobilization of Cuban nationalism,” Lopez-Levy said. Intense Cuban nationalism “preceded Fidel,” he said, “and it will survive as a major actor in Cuban politics well beyond his passing.”

At a small snack bar called “Los Afortunados” (“the Lucky Ones”) a group of young Cubans said Sunday that they feared Trump would take U.S.-Cuba relations into the past just as it seemed as though their lives were getting easier. If he restricted travel and the ability of Cubans in the United States to visit their relatives, “it would be terrible for our families,” said Yosbel Benitez, 30.

His friend Ricardo Marrero, 28, who emigrated to the United States in 2013, was back for a visit. Marrero hadn’t seen his wife and 4-year-old daughter in a year. But with the WiFi hotspots, he now sees them every day using the popular video chat app IMO. Two years earlier, it would have cost him $2 a minute to talk to them on the phone.

“It’s what gives me the strength to keep working hard to bring them over,” Marrero said.

Air travel is easier, too. On Monday the first commercial flight from Miami in 50 years will land in Havana, and fares are less than half the price they are on the restrictive charter flights that have been the only option until now.

The snack bar, one of the types of privately run businesses permitted under Raúl Castro, is directly across from the U.S. diplomatic compound, which Obama restored to full embassy status last year.

Canada, Mexico and other nations had lowered the flags Sunday at their embassies in Havana in tribute to Fidel Castro, but the U.S. flag was snapping in the wind at the top of the pole.

[newstfionline]

Business or Politics? What Trump Means for Cuba

By Frances Robles, NY Times, Nov. 15, 2016

MIAMI--To Chad Olin, it seemed like the perfect opportunity: Decades of animosity between the United States and Cuba were peeling away, opening a final frontier in the Caribbean to dollar-wielding Americans.

Mr. Olin, 30, a Harvard Business School graduate, gave up a career in private equity to break into the Cuba travel market. He started a company that organizes trips for millennials to legally visit Cuba--a business made possible because President Obama has broadened travel to the island and expanded licenses for Americans to do business there.

So what happens now, Mr. Olin wonders.

On the campaign trail, President-elect Donald J. Trump threatened to roll back the sweeping détente with Cuba, lambasting the “concessions” made to its Communist government and raising the possibility that one of Mr. Obama’s signature foreign policy initiatives could be stripped away.

“I am still trying to think about what this means for my business that I spent literally the last two years working on, setting up something that was going to be perfect for an open market,” Mr. Olin said. “If we go back to the old way, I don’t know if I have a business. It’s a huge blow.”

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken advantage of Mr. Obama’s decisions to loosen travel and other restrictions on Cuba. More Americans and Cuban émigrés now travel to Cuba, and the number of Americans who visited the country rose by 50 percent last year, according to the state news media.

More Cubans receive money transfers and parcels. There’s a Four Points Sheraton in Havana, and three more hotels are set to open. Airbnb rents private rooms, and American Airlines is about to start direct flights to Havana.

For them, and Mr. Olin, the critical question remains whether Mr. Trump, a real estate mogul and hotel developer, will be a businessman at heart and allow Mr. Obama’s measures to continue--or if he will instead keep a vow he made and scale back everything from diplomatic relations to the unlimited rum and cigars Mr. Obama recently allowed from Cuba.

Such a move by Mr. Trump would underscore the shifting relations between the United States and Cuba, which have long depended on who occupied the Oval Office.

“Several large European investment groups have asked me to take the ‘Trump Magic’ to Cuba,” Mr. Trump once wrote in a 1999 editorial in The Miami Herald supporting the trade embargo against Cuba.

“My investment in Cuba would directly subsidize the oppression of the Cuban people,” he said at the time. “But I’d rather lose those millions than lose my self-respect.”

Mr. Trump has, at other times, been vague on the issue. During the primary contest, he repeatedly said he thought restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba was “fine,” but added that the United States and the Cuban people did not get enough in return.

But as the election approached, Mr. Trump grew less equivocal.

In March, he told CNN that he would “probably” continue having diplomatic relations with Cuba, but he said he would want “much better deals than we’re making.”

Then, Mr. Trump took a harder line in Miami this fall.

“All of the concessions Barack Obama has granted the Castro regime were done through executive order, which means the next president can reverse them, and that I will do unless the Castro regime meets our demands,” Mr. Trump said at a campaign event in September. “Not my demands. Our demands.”

Vice President-elect Mike Pence reaffirmed that stance on Twitter, saying Mr. Trump would repeal Mr. Obama’s executive orders unless there was “real political and religious freedom.”

Asked by a reporter if his comments meant he would break off diplomatic relations with Cuba, Mr. Trump suggested that he might, and said he probably would not appoint an ambassador to Cuba.

“The agreement President Obama signed is a very weak agreement,” he said. “We get nothing. The people of Cuba get nothing, and I would do whatever is necessary to get a good agreement.”

Robert L. Muse, a lawyer who specializes in United States-Cuba trade law, said Mr. Trump seemed to believe that Washington had struck a single deal with Cuba, when in reality there are several agreements that range from direct mail to managing oil spills.

Mr. Trump could pick through them one by one to eliminate the ones he dislikes and keep others. But Mr. Muse said the American government could be financially liable if it pulled out the rug from under companies that had acted in good faith.

“Rescinding enhanced travel that Obama has introduced would be the most tragic thing Trump might do, but I don’t think he will,” Mr. Muse said. “He has invested a lifetime in travel, resorts and hotel accommodations, and it’s a global enterprise. It seems counterintuitive.”

What else could Mr. Trump do?

Change travel rules. Tourism to Cuba is still illegal under the embargo, but President Bill Clinton was the first to allow “people-to-people” excursions that allow travelers to go if the trip is, for example, for educational or religious purposes. President George W. Bush scrapped those, and then Mr. Obama expanded them so that travelers no longer needed to get special permission first.

Under Mr. Bush, a Cuban-American could visit once every three years. Now, it’s unlimited.

End regularly scheduled commercial flights to Cuba. Cuba and the United States agreed to allow up to 90 daily round-trip flights between the nations, the Department of Transportation said.

Southwest began its service on Sunday, and American Airlines is set to start flights to Havana on Nov. 28.

“We are full steam ahead and can’t speculate as to any possible future changes,” Martha Pantin, an American Airlines spokeswoman, said.

Scrap the contentious “wet foot, dry foot” policy. When tens of thousands of Cubans took to the seas in 1994, Mr. Clinton changed American policy so that anyone caught at sea was sent back. But tens of thousands of Cubans continue to migrate to the United States anyway, most by land, because if they arrive they can stay. Many have walked across the Americas to reach the southern border.

“One of the big, main ways Trump looks at foreign policy is through the issue of immigration,” said Phil Peters, a longtime Cuba expert who now serves as a consultant for American companies seeking to do business there. “When it gets to Cuba, he’s going to see a country where there’s a lot of illegal immigration coming to the United States.”

Change the rules that allow businesses like Airbnb and Marriott to operate in Cuba. He can do this. But if he’s a developer at heart, would he?

John S. Kavulich, the president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said that in the 1990s the Trump organization inquired with him about the logistics of doing business in Cuba. Newsweek reported that Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts paid at least $68,000 to a consulting firm in late 1998 to go to Cuba on the company’s behalf, in an apparent violation of the American trade embargo.

Maurcio Claver-Carone, the founder of a political action committee that supports the trade embargo, said Mr. Trump seemed genuinely moved by stories of human rights violations in Cuba, so he “made a commitment” to the Cuban-American community that he was likely to keep.

He is most likely to repeal the orders that were “blatantly inconsistent with U.S. law,” Mr. Claver-Caron said, such as allowing investments with companies run by the Cuban military. (The hotel industry in Cuba is run by the armed forces.)

Mr. Trump could also overturn a move from late October that broadened the pool of Cuban officials who are allowed to receive cash allowances and conduct banking transactions with Americans, he said.

The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

But in Cuba, several people interviewed said the changes Mr. Obama made had not yet made their way down to the people. Some felt that the expansion of business opportunities had helped the Castro government, not the people, so they were generally pleased with the idea of a Trump administration.

Roberto Peñalber, 34, said many Cubans had felt forced to flee under Mr. Obama, because they feared he would rescind preferable immigration treatment for Cubans.

“Now we don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Trump could possibly make better deals than Hillary. She’s more communist than he is. That’s maybe why the United States voted for Trump.”