Congress eases US restrictions on Cuba

Wednesday, March 11. The Democratically controlled US House of Congress has voted to ease restrictions on US dealings with Cuba. New legislation wrapped up in a $410bn spending bill allows Cuban-Americans to visit the island once a year (rather than for two weeks every three years, as the Bush administration decreed) and if President Barack Obama signs the bill into law like he is expected to, Cuban-Americans will also be allowed to send more than $1,200 home annually and controls on the transit of food and medicine will be loosened.

During the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama said that the money and travel restrictions imposed in 2004 isolated those living on the island from "the transformative message carried there by Cuban Americans."

Although Obama has also said that he has no intention of lifting the 47-year-old trade embargo on Cuba until the communist island agrees to democratic reforms, yesterday's vote in Congress has been greeted as yet another effort to reach out diplomatically to countries with a history of confrontation with America.

The bill had been a source of controversy among some US senators who felt that the US should maintain a hard line towards Cuba, but treasury secretary Tim Geithner has assured them that the new terms do not represent a major shift of US policy towards the island.

Formerly an opponent of the $410bn bill, Democratic Senator Bill Nelson said yesterday that he was in favour of reviewing US-Cuba relations but that any recommendations should come from Obama himself. "While there has been disagreement within this body [Congress] in the past over the most effective way for the US to help the Cuban people, I believe that if there is to be a new strategy towards Cuba then it must come from our Commander-in-Chief," said Nelson, "not from the tinkering of a few lawmakers inserting language in a must-pass appropriations bill without any opportunity for debate."

FIRST POSTED MARCH 11, 2009