The US House Agriculture committee approved a bill that is winding its way to the full House to end the US travel ban on Cuba. The close vote was 25 to 20.
“The Agriculture Committee’s close vote appears to portend rough days ahead for the bill, even though proponents of liberalizing US exchange with Cuba thought this was the best opportunityin years to chip away at the US embargo on Cuba,” said the AP.
While Cuba may have receded from its privileged place among US foreign-policy preoccupations in recent years, anything related to the island dictatorship can still be counted on to raise emotions in Congress.
Any bill raises the issue of Senate filibusters.
Senator Robert Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, accuses the travel industry of “happily enriching the Castro regime, simply because Cuba offers white sand beaches 90 miles from our coast.”
US farmers are already allowed to sell to Cuba, but only via transactions in which Cuba pays in advance and through a third-country bank. The legislation would scuttle those requirements.
Pro-trade and free-travel advocates have pushed for lifting the farm-trade and travel embargoes before, but it may be an issue whose time has come, US-Cuba analysts say.
That’s partly because Cuba doesn’t raise the emotional fervor it once did. Another reason is that the Cuban-American lobby is no longer monolithic, with younger Cuban-Americans especially willing to consider something other than the isolationist doctrine of their elders.
Sensing the shift, pro-business and pro-trade groups, including the US Chamber of Commerce, have lined up behind the legislation.
“Enabling Americans to travel to Cuba and expand already legal export operations is an important first step to reforming US policy toward Cuba,” said Bruce Josten, a lobbyist for the US Chamber of Commerce.
By David Wilkening
