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The Biden administration has lifted several Trump-era restrictions on Cuba, including some aspects of travel to the island, a ceiling on family remittances and the issuance of immigration visas.
A statement from the State Department described the measures as “intended to further support the Cuban people by providing them with additional tools to live free from the oppression of the Cuban government and to seek greater economic opportunities”.
The decision comes after a lengthy internal review, which was delayed following the Cuban government’s crackdown on widespread street protests on the island last summer.
The administration is under pressure to reduce the number of migrants crossing the southern border of the United States, where tens of thousands of Cubans have become the second largest group seeking unauthorized entry through Mexico. Last month, the administration and Cuba held direct talks on migration for the first time in four years.
Under bilateral agreements for decades, the United States has agreed to issue at least 20,000 immigrant visas a year to Cubans in exchange for Cuba’s agreement to accept flights to deport those who arrived illegally or were otherwise considered inadmissible.
These agreements were suspended in 2018 as part of the Trump administration’s lifting of President Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba, which led to the resumption of diplomatic relations in 2015. Visas of all kinds were further restricted by sanctions, and the embassy and consulate of the United States were reduced to skeletal headquarters in 2019.
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Under the new measures, the administration will increase the capacity of the consulate and restore the parole program for family reunification.
The Trump-era limit, which limited family remittances to $ 1,000 every three months, must be lifted. The ban on non-family remittances will be eased to allow the payment of independent Cuban entrepreneurs, and the Ministry of Finance has issued at least one license to allow direct investment in equity in a private Cuban company.
“We will promote opportunities outside the public sector by allowing access to advanced cloud technologies, application programming interfaces and e-commerce platforms,” the statement said. A senior administration official said they were still exploring ways to allow direct money transfers under the new policies, after bank transfers had largely been shut down in recent years.
The ban restricting US trade and charter flights to Havana will also be lifted, allowing flights to other Cuban cities. Civic tourism in the United States remains banned, as are individual travel in most circumstances, but the Treasury Department will now issue licenses for group educational trips.
Cuba is facing a severe economic crisis caused by a combination of a pandemic and a sharp drop in tourism, and global inflation, as well as ongoing US sanctions under a decade-long US trade embargo that can only be lifted by Congress.
Senior U.S. officials who briefed reporters on the new policy said President Biden had instructed them to devise options that would simultaneously “promote responsibility for human rights violations,” including direct sanctions against individual government and military officials, and ” to explore meaningful ways to support the Cuban people. “
“In principle, these policies are designed to promote our own national interests, not to establish new relations with the Cuban communist government,” one official said. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity under rules imposed by the White House.
Although he promised to lift Trump’s restrictive measures during his presidential campaign, Biden was caught up in controversial pressure on Cuba. Senior lawmakers, including a number of Cuban Americans who opposed easing some of the restrictions, were quick to criticize the new initiatives.
“Today’s announcement risks sending the wrong message to the wrong people, at the wrong time and for all the wrong reasons,” said Senator Robert Menendez (DN.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He said he was “scared” to learn that “tourism-like” travel would now be allowed. “To be clear, those who still believe that increasing travel will create democracy in Cuba are simply in a state of denial.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Republican in the committee’s rankings, was just as contemptuous. “The #Cuba regime has threatened Biden with mass migration and there are sympathizers in the administration, and the result is that today we see the first steps back to Obama’s failed policy on Cuba,” he said on Twitter.
However, a number of Democrats criticized Biden’s failure to make the campaign’s promised changes. Saying he was “encouraged to take the right direction,” spokesman Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) Tweeted that “reversing Trump’s failed strategy and removing decades-old Cold War policies will take time.” I welcome this move towards a smarter strategy of engagement and diplomacy. “
In a statement late Monday, the Cuban Foreign Ministry called the changes “positive but very limited”.
“These communications do not change the blockade in any way,” as Cuba refers to the embargo, “or the major economic siege measures adopted by Trump, such as the lists of Cuban entities subject to additional coercive measures; nor do they remove travel restrictions for US citizens, “the ministry said.
The ministry attributes the new policy, at least in part, to “a request from the Latin American and Caribbean community and virtually all UN members”, which for decades has overwhelmingly denied the embargo on the UN General Assembly vote for decades.
In a potential embarrassment for the administration, a growing number of hemisphere leaders have said they will not attend the US summit, which Biden will host next month in Los Angeles, after officials said Cuba was unlikely to be invited. Senior administration officials said invitations to the June 6 rally have not yet been issued and no final decisions have been made. But they insisted the new policies were not linked to the controversy.
“The plan is to send the invitations soon,” said one official. “The host has a wide discretion … we consult with our partners in the region, we have this debate about who to invite, but in the end it is the host’s prerogative to make that decision.”
The administration has said it does not want “undemocratic” countries, including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, to attend. In response, the presidents of Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras and several Caribbean countries said they would not attend, while a number of others said they might not show up.
Officials also dismissed questions as to whether the apparent reason for reducing the size of the embassy and consulate in the first place – the safety of US diplomats suffering from mysterious diseases – has been resolved.
The Trump administration has accused the disease of being an “attack” on diplomats by the Cuban government. Cuba has denied this and has subsequently reported identical diseases in a number of countries. The cause of the reported diseases has not been established.
“The president has ordered us to increase staff … with an appropriate security position,” said an administration official. “We’ve been working for the last few months to come up with a plan so we can do it. ”
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