HAVANA, March 1st. The EU has asked its ambassador to Cuba to explain why he signed an open letter asking the US to stop being “hostile” to Havana. Read more
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HAVANA, Jan. 12th Havana residents react after President Donald Trump’s outgoing administration returned Cuba to the US blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism. Read more
HAVANA, July 19thy It was President Barack Obama who initiated the political thaw between the US and Cuba. Read more
HAVANA, May 15th (Reuters) – The United States is considering returning Cuba to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, Read more
HAVANA, May 10th Although the sale of food to Cuba by the United States is permitted, Read more
HAVANA, May 5th Expect additional flights for American citizens and permanent residents who remain in Cuba after the island government extended airport closures until at least May 21. Read more
HAVANA, March 28th (CNN) Cuba is offering to send doctors to more countries struggling with the coronavirus. Read more
HAVANA, Sept. 20th (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Thursday ordered the expulsion from the United States of two members of Cuba’s delegation to the United Nations and restricted..
HAVANA, Feb. 21th President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia is militarily ready for a Cuban Missile-style crisis if the US is foolish enough to want one and that his country currently has the edge when it comes to a first nuclear strike.
HAVANA, Feb. 7th (Reuters) – Cuba has given a visa to a senior American diplomat to lead the U.S. embassy in Havana, a U.S. official said, in a sign both nations want to keep open lines of communication despite a sharp Read more
HAVANA, June 25th 35th Minnesota does little in the way of trade with Cuba, but Lt. Gov. Tina Smith believes last week’s trade mission to the island is likely to change that.
Smith spent much of last week touring Cuba with a group of state Read more
HAVANA, June 12th As President Donald Trump weighs rolling back some of the Cuba normalization policies begun during the Obama administration, a new poll finds a majority of Republicans would oppose such a move.
The president is scheduled to speak about Cuba on Friday Read more
HAVANA,Dec. 18, The US Department of State says delegates from the United States and Cuba discussed regional developments related to clean energy during the first Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Working Read more
HAVANA, August 2th (
HAVANA, May (Reuters) 17th Cuba and the United States aim to reach new agreements on cooperation in law enforcement, health and agriculture over the coming months, a senior Cuban official said on Monday, as part of the former Cold War foes’ drive to normalize ties.
The Communist-ruled island and its northern neighbor reestablished diplomatic relations a year ago after decades of hostility and have since signed deals on the environment, postal services and direct flights.
A bilateral commission met on Monday in Havana to establish a roadmap for talks over the rest of this year, which would include more high-ranking official visits, said Josefina Vidal, head of the Cuban delegation.
In March, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president in 88 years to visit Cuba.
“The agenda is quite ambitious,” Vidal told a news conference, adding that talks about intellectual property rights were also in the cards.
The two sides had discussed holding dialogues on human rights and claims, the U.S. embassy in Cuba said in a statement.
They already outlined their respective claims late last year, with the U.S. seeking upwards of $10 billion in compensation for nationalized properties and Cuba demanding at least $121 billion in reparations for the U.S. trade embargo and other acts it described as aggression.
“The United States looks forward to holding these meetings in the near future,” the embassy said. “Tomorrow (we) will discuss specific steps related to bilateral security during the law enforcement dialogue.”
Vidal, who is the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s chief of U.S. affairs, said the island was hopeful that whomever became next the U.S. president would continue to deepen the detente. The United States will hold a general election on Nov.8.
“When you look at the polls, the majority of the American population and the Cuban American community are in favor of the normalization of relations,” she said. “So I expect their opinion will be taken into account.”
HAVANA, April 19th On Monday, Cuban’s top leaders and officials have criticized the squeaking inefficiency of the state-controlled economy. They also took note of the vibrant private sector as potential source of US subversion.
According to News Journal Online, the Cuban government comments illustrated the commotion it is facing as it tries to modernize and maintain control of things now thatit’s in a new era with Washington. The Cuban Communist Party has ended the third day of its twice-a-decade congress with vote for a 114- member Central Committee. The vote turned to select the 15- member Political Bureau. The vote, just like Congress, was open only to 1,000 delegates, 280 selected guests and state journalists.
ABC News reported that Cuban President and First Party Secretary, Raul Castro, opened the meeting with evaluation of the state reforms he introduced after taking over in 2008. Castro blamed the ‘obsolete mentality’ and ‘attitude of inertia’ for the state’s failure to impose reforms meant to increase productivity.
To follow, Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel also repeated the criticism of the bureaucracy in his speech. He added that ‘lack of confidence in the future’ is the consequence of what Castro said. Diaz-Canel added that “Along with other deficiencies, there’s a lack of readiness, high standards and control, and little foresight or initiative from sectors and bureaucrats in charge of making these goals a reality.”
However, Yahoo published that state media focuses more on the need to protect Cuba’s socialist system from global capitalism and US influence in particular. It is notable that US President Barack Obama visited Havana, the first in over 90 years, and the move was interpreted as an attempt to seduce ordinary Cubans into abandoning the country’s socialist views.
Even Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez went to say that the visit of Obama is ‘an attack on the foundation of the history, culture and symbols of Cuba.’ Meanwhile, Rene Gonzales, former intelligence agent held in US and resolved by détente with Washington, said there should be consideration on the political reform in Cuba.
Read more at http://www.lawyerherald.com/articles/43087/20160419/cuban-leaders-criticize-ways-bureaucracy-private-sector.htm#UfyGtQSy5QRL3YX7.99
HAVANA, march 28 (AFP) – Cuba’s Fidel Castro signaled continued resistance to rapprochement between Washington and Havana, writing in an opinion piece on Monday that his country “has no need of gifts” from the United States.
The former president, 89, remained out of sight during last week’s historic visit to the communist island by US President Barack Obama which aimed to cement normalization.
In his first published remarks about the visit, Castro seemed unwilling to forgive and forget more than a half-century of enmity between the two countries, declaring in the Granma newspaper that Cuba “has no need of gifts from the empire.”
He made his remarks in a piece entitled “El Hermano Obama” — “Brother Obama.”
“Listening to the words of the US president could give anyone a heart attack,” Castro said, in an ironic barb.
“Nobody has any illusion that the people of this noble and selfless country will surrender glory and rights and the spiritual wealth that has come through the development of education, science and culture.”
Obama during last week’s three-day visit — the first by a US president in 88 years — thrilled Cubans by calling for democracy and greater freedoms, and took part in baseball diplomacy during a match between Cuban and American professional players.
The landmark visit was spearheaded by the US president and Cuba’s current leader Raul Castro, who has proven to be far more reform-minded than the revolutionary icon brother whom he succeeded as the island’s president a decade ago.
Since handing the presidency over to his younger brother, Fidel Castro has spent his time writing reflections which occasionally appear in the party press.
HAVANA, March 14th (AP) As Washington normalizes relations with Havana, nearly 30,000 Cuban nationals convicted of crimes in the U.S. may face deportation.
The Miami Herald reports that 28,400 Cuban nationals have served their prison terms and face automatic deportations. Some 18,000 live in Florida. For decades they’ve been released under supervision by immigration authorities because the U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Authorities say there’s no imminent change planned for immigration policy toward Cuba. Republican Miami Congressman Carlos Curbelo says dangerous criminals should be deported at the earliest date possible, while those convicted of minor offenses should be given the opportunity to stay.
Miami defense attorney Jose “Pepe” Herrera says many Cuban inmates didn’t anticipate any U.S. change toward Cuba when they signed waivers agreeing to deportations to avoid immigration detention proceedings.
read also: https://havana-live.com/tens-of-thousands-cubans-fear-deportation-after-july-20/
HAVANA, Feb. 27th (EFE) After winning the court case for rights to the Havana Club brand in the United States, the maker aims to have its rum become the first Cuban product to be sold in the U.S. when the long-standing embargo is lifted, because the North American country is a market with enormous potential and almost half the worldwide sales of premium rum.
“We’re sure Havana Club rum will be the top Cuban product that is soonest to enter the U.S. market, which represents 40 percent of worldwide rum sales, so the challenge and the potential are enormous,” the director of market development for Havana Club, Sergio Valdes, told EFE.
Valdes said that with a market like the U.S. still off limits, Havana Club is already the third best-selling rum in the world, a position the brand could easily surpass once Cuban companies are allowed unrestricted exports to the neighboring country, eager as it is to buy “emblematic products” from the island that have been banned there for the last 50 years like rum and tobacco.
Without yet having full access to that rich market, the mixed Cuban-French company that markets Havana Club – made up of France’s Pernod Ricard and Cuba’s Cuba Ron – nonetheless took a giant step forward several weeks ago by finally winning the 20-year legal battle with Bacardi for rights to the brand in the United States.
From that legal tug-of-war arose an irregular situation: Bacardi marketed the brand in the U.S. while Pernod Ricard sold it in the rest of the world after 1993 when the mixed company was founded.
The rum conflict goes back to the Cuban Revolution’s 1959 victory, when Fidel Castro confiscated the Havana Club company, founded in 1935 by the Arechabala family from Spain, and the new government began to market the brand. In the 1990s, the family sold the rights to Bacardi in the United States.
In all the world’s markets and including all lines of rum, Havana Club in 2015 sold some 4 million cases, or 36 million liters of rum, a product that for the company’s management is more than just a drink, it is “a little bit of Cuban life and culture that we are bringing to the world.”
HAVANA, Jan. 6th The Cuban government is considering different ways to bypass the potential expropriation of its aircraft, which the U.S. could impound on American soil as payment for billions of dollars in unpaid U.S. terrorism judgments against Cuba, a State Department official told Bloomberg BNA.
Meanwhile, several Miami attorneys who won multi-million dollar terrorism judgments for their clients against Cuba are watching how a civil aviation arrangement plays out between the U.S. and Cuba, in case there’s an opportunity to collect.
The Cuban government has shown interest in a code-share agreement with U.S. airlines so that American, not Cuban, planes land in the U.S., the State Department official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under State Department ground rules for reporters.
Another option the Cubans are weighing is leasing airplanes from the U.S. or a third country to fly routes between Cuba and the U.S. All of the choices would give Cuba an opportunity to use more modern aircraft while protecting their own from seizure. The Cuban government owns the airlines based on the communist island, so if its airplanes land in the U.S., they may be confiscated for the balance of about $2 billion in unpaid judgments.
“The Cuban government is very well aware of that risk,” the State Department official told Bloomberg BNA.
The U.S. announced an informal civil aviation arrangement with Cuba in December to govern regularly scheduled flights and charter service between the two countries in the absence of a formal agreement. Both sides are expected to sign off on the arrangement in early 2016 (243 ITD, 12/18/15).
As the Cuban government figures out how to enter the U.S. market, Cuban air service to the U.S. is not scheduled for departure anytime soon, the State Department official said. Airlines interested in flying routes on Cuba’s behalf to the U.S. would have to secure licenses from the U.S. Commerce and Treasury departments, as well as authorization from the U.S. Department of Transportation, the State Department official said.
“We told the Cubans we were prepared to give positive consideration to such license applications,” the official told Bloomberg BNA.
Scheduled service from the U.S. to Cuba in American aircraft is expected to commence in the first half of 2016, after the Department of Transportation divvies up the Havana slots to U.S. airlines. Currently, there would be a maximum of 20 slots available.
“This is a completely new destination and origin, or at least it’s new for this generation of Americans,” Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told reporters. “And so we’re going to work through it as quickly as we can.”
Behavior Going Back to 1959
Frozen Cuban assets in the U.S. have satisfied some of the judgment awards, but most of the balance remains uncollected while creditors sweep the U.S. for Cuban assets. A federal antiterrorism law lets the families of state-sponsored terrorism victims seek damages in U.S. courts. Total compensatory damages for the 11 judgments exceed $2.1 billion, while punitive damages account for nearly $1.8 billion.
Foreign governments are not required to pay punitive damages, Alfonso Perez, an attorney who in 2006 helped secured a $400 million judgment against Cuba for clients, said.
U.S. state and federal courts imposed the judgments against the Cuban government when it was labeled a state sponsor of international terrorism. The State Department placed Cuba on the terrorism blacklist in 1982, and, following a review, Secretary of State John Kerry scrubbed Cuba from the list last May.
Eight judgments seek compensation for executions, torture and other behavior that occurred prior to Cuba’s inclusion on the terrorism list. For example, Perez was one of the attorneys who represented the family of Robert Fuller, a U.S. plantation owner in Cuba. Fuller was tortured and executed in 1960. Other judgments are tied to the torture and execution of political dissidents and other U.S. citizens.
The U.S. discussed the judgments and other claims in a preliminary meeting with the Cuban government in December 2015. Both sides will reconvene for the next round of talks in the first quarter of 2016. In addition to the roughly $2 billion in judgments the U.S. is seeking, it also wants Cuba to compensate U.S. citizens for 5,913 certified claims over property and assets the Cuban government seized shortly after Fidel Castro took power.
Without interest, the certified claims total $1.9 billion. Cuban officials have countered that the U.S. owes Cuba more than $100 billion in reparations for human and economic damages they say the country suffered under the U.S. embargo.
‘Ear to the Ground.’
Attorney Arturo Hernandez represented Ana Margarita Martinez, a Miami woman who in 2001 won a $27.1 million judgment against the Cuban government, because her husband at the time, Juan Pablo Roque, was a Cuban double agent who once worked for the FBI.
She recovered $198,000 in exchange for waiving her right to collect $20 million in punitive damages. With 6 percent interest in the remaining $7.1 million, Hernandez said the Cuban government actually owes his client $14 million.
“I do believe that there are going to be, I think, opportunities presented in the future to be able to collect on these judgments based either on seizing Cuban property in the United States, whether that be funds or whether that be airlines, because we are a judgment creditor of the government of Cuba,” Hernandez told Bloomberg BNA Dec. 21. “We certainly have our ear to the ground with respect to these issues.”
Attorney Jorge Borron won a $253 million judgment for the family of Rafael del Pino Siero in 2008. Del Pino was an ex-friend of Castro who was imprisoned in Cuba shortly after Castro took over. Borron alleged that the Cuban government in the late 1970s tortured and hanged del Pino in his cell.
Airplanes aren’t Cuba’s only assets, but Borron, who has yet to collect on the judgment, is frustrated the Cuban government is looking for ways to protect their aircraft from the judgments. He said he is disappointed that the U.S. appears to be “bending over backwards” to help Cuba.
“That’s going to create a lot of backlash with many, many individuals objecting to this,” Borron said.
Perez isn’t surprised the Cuban government is trying to protect its assets. He said the larger issue is the absence of a process to resolve the judgments.
“I think the country, the Congress, the White House, who has shown tremendous leadership in this area, should really push to have a mechanism for resolving these claims,” Perez told Bloomberg BNA.
http://www.bna.com/cuba-may-middlemen-n57982065754/
HAVANA, Dec.8th (REUTERS) Cuban and U.S. officials on Tuesday will begin to untangle one of the most complex obstacles to normalization of relations between the two countries: the claims of Americans whose property was nationalized after the 1959 revolution and Cuban counterclaims for damages caused by the U.S. trade embargo.
The talks in Havana are the latest in a series of bilateral meetings since the two former Cold War adversaries restored diplomatic ties in July this year.
Some 5,913 U.S. corporations and individuals have been awarded $1.9 billion worth of claims for factories, farms, homes and other assets that were nationalized in Cuba after Fidel Castro’s rebels came to power on Jan. 1, 1959.
Those claims, registered with the U.S. Justice Department’s Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, are now worth roughly $8 billion when including 6.0 percent annual interest.
Cuban law ties the settlement of the claims to U.S. reparations for damages resulting from the embargo and other acts of U.S. aggression against Cuba. Cuban estimates of that damage range from $121 billion to more than $300 billion.
Neither side is eager to pay the full value, setting up a negotiation.
“The meeting is the first step in what we expect to be a long and complex process, but the United States views the resolution of outstanding claims as a top priority for normalization,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement on Monday.
Cuba nationalized all foreign businesses and reached settlements with owners from other countries. The government recognizes the U.S. claims but it cut off negotiations in response to the decision by former President Dwight Eisenhower to suspend Cuba’s sugar quota in 1960.
The claims sat dormant for half a century as a result of the U.S.-Cuba estrangement, which ended a year a ago when U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced detente.
Many of the nationalized companies no longer exist and individual claims have been passed to heirs.
The largest claim, by the Cuban Electric Company for more than $267 million, has changed hands several times due to mergers and acquisitions and is held by Office Depot, itself a takeover target of Staples Inc pending antitrust review.
With interest that claim is now worth more than $1 billion.
Other major claimants include Starwood Hotels, Coca-Cola, the former International Telephone & Telegraph Co., now ITT Corp, and various oil, sugar and financial interests.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-usa-idUSKBN0TQ2W020151207#zJIplc7oYRhzaFGE.99
HAVANA, Dec.5th (New York Times) Representatives of Cuba and the United States will meet on Tuesday in Havana to begin negotiations on settling decades-old outstanding property claims for the thousands of American citizens and companies whose assets were confiscated after Cuba’s revolution, according to several people briefed on the coming talks.
The meeting is considered a major step because the United States’ trade embargo against Cuba was initially enacted after Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader at the time, expropriated land from American companies. Nearly 6,000 people and corporations lost homes, farms, factories, sugar mills and other properties totaling $1.9 billion.
Now, for the first time, Cuba has agreed to meet to consider settling those losses. The State Department is expected to announce the meeting on Monday. A Cuban Embassy spokeswoman declined to comment.
“This meeting is an enormously big deal,” said Mauricio J. Tamargo, the former chairman of the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission, an agency within the Justice Department that adjudicates claims against foreign governments.
“The Cubans have up till now never recognized these claims as legitimate or something they are even prepared to discuss. It has never happened in 56 years since the revolution began and they started confiscating American property.”
When Mr. Castro declared victory in 1959, many Americans were forced to flee their homes and give up their land. His government later started expropriating large companies, and eventually nearly 900 corporations filed claims.
The list of claimants includes Exxon, Texaco, Coca-Cola and Starwood Resorts. About half the value of the claims, now estimated at up to $8 billion, belong to just 10 companies.
The issue had long been a stumbling block to the re-establishment of relations between the United States and Cuba. But the Obama administration restored diplomatic relations last year, with the vague assurance that property claims would be on the long list of issues to be taken up in bilateral talks.
Cuba would be unlikely to accept any deal that did not include lifting the trade embargo, which has for years been the nation’s top priority, said Mr. Tamargo, a lawyer with the firm Poblete Tamargo, which represents people with claims. If the embargo is lifted, he added, the Cubans could pay off the settlements with the increased trade revenues.
The Cuban government has estimated that the American embargo cost Cuba about $121 billion in losses.
“If American properties are compensated, then the embargo should be lifted,” Mr. Tamargo said. “There is a window of opportunity for Cubans that will be gone in about a year.”
“Obama is a very good negotiating partner for them to have as opposed to President Trump or President Bush or even President Hillary,” he added, referring to Donald J. Trump, Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton.
The talks would not include the thousands of claims of Cuban-Americans who lost property before they became American citizens, like Mr. Tamargo’s family, who lost a 3,500-acre farm.
Although many people assume that Cuba does not have the money to pay off settlements, it could pay claims by offering American corporations with outstanding claims a first shot at the Cuban market, said Richard E. Feinberg, whose Brookings Institution study on the issue will be released Tuesday.
If the payments were spread out over 10 years, Cuba probably has the money to pay the original claims, but perhaps not the 6 percent interest levied by the claims commission, Mr. Feinberg said.
“It’s a historic moment, if you consider that U.S.-Cuban relations collapsed in the early ’60s in large measure when Fidel Castro moved to expropriate the large U.S. holdings there,” he said. “Now 55 years later, the two sides are sitting down to say, how do we settle this?”
One person with a pending claim, Margery Leeder, 85, a retired real estate agent in Pompano Beach, Fla., said she never thought her family would be compensated after the Cuban government seized 72,000 acres of rice and sugar her father owned outside Havana.
“If you think about it, the Castro brothers have done the biggest heist in history,” Mrs. Leeder said.
Her father’s land was worth $3.9 million in 1959, and the family’s claim is now valued at $16 million.
“Overnight if you were American and had a bank account, it was closed; you had no money,” she said. “Eventually Castro did allow you to get some money, only about $1,000. Castro said nobody needed more than that.”
HAVANA, Sept. 18 (AP) — The United States and Cuba should be able to transform their new diplomatic relationship into a deeper commercial partnership before the end of the year, with direct postal service to begin and an agreement on regularly scheduled commercial flights between the two countries, an American official said.
Washington also plans to publish new regulations soon making it easier for U.S. citizens to visit the island and do business with its growing ranks of independent entrepreneurs.
The official, who is familiar with the diplomacy, described significant progress in U.S.-Cuban discussions since the former Cold War foes reopened embassies in their respective countries in July. At a meeting in Havana last week, delegations from each side established a plan to settle a half-century of economic and legal disputes within the next 15 months.
While difficult questions related to human rights and compensation claims won’t be resolved immediately, the official said first steps toward a broader normalization of ties would come quickly.
First, the Obama administration intends to move on its own in the coming days by releasing a new set of rules designed to loosen the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to publicly lay out the process and demanded anonymity.
The goal is to pick up where President Barack Obama left off in January, when he eased economic restrictions on Cuba in potentially the most dramatic manner since relations between the countries broke down after Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959 and the subsequent Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban missile crisis. The action sought to cut red tape for U.S. travel to Cuba, permit American companies to export telephones, computers and Internet technology, and allow U.S. firms to send supplies to private Cuban enterprises.
But efforts to expand business, tourism and other exchanges have run into an overlapping thicket of U.S. laws and hindrances, not to mention an uneven response from Cuba’s political leaders, the U.S. official said.
Many U.S. travelers still need to go on supervised group trips. Routine airline service hasn’t satisfied various federal conditions. Cruise ships and ferries are still trying to finalize regular maritime routes with Cuban authorities. Credit card and other companies still can’t transfer payments to Cuba. Telecommunications companies haven’t been able to set up shop and get equipment to the island 90 miles south of Florida. And Cuba’s government isn’t even running its Internet connections anywhere near capacity levels.
The new U.S. rules should help cut through some of these bureaucratic hurdles, the official said, though he declined to describe all the legal changes in concrete terms. Only Congress can end the embargo, and much of the foreseen expansion of U.S.-Cuban economic ties rests on the cooperation of the island’s communist government.
The U.S.-Cuban political track moved ahead Thursday as new ambassador Jose Ramon Cabanas Rodriguez presented his credentials to Obama at a White House ceremony. The pair briefly spoke, according to a Cuban embassy statement.
When Obama laid out his vision of improved relations eight months ago, he said his objectives were twofold: ease economic hardship in Cuba and spur its development of a private market outside of state control.
Some breakthroughs can be expected by the end of the year, according to the official.
Washington and Havana are slated to begin a “pilot program” allowing Cubans and Americans to send mail directly to one another, the official said. The governments have been speaking about re-establishing a postal link since Obama entered office, but the talks stalled when Cuba imprisoned U.S. contractor Alan Gross. Direct mail service was halted in 1963, though letters and packages travel back and forth through countries like Canada and Mexico.
The postal program will use the Miami and Havana airports, the official said.
HAVANA, Sept 12 President Obama has reauthorized Cuba‘s listing on the Trading with the Enemy Act, a move that allows him to continue to use executive authority to improve ties with Cuba.
Obama’s action follows a unilateral decision last December to re-establish diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba, paving the way to embassies being opened in both countries.
The act, which must be reauthorized every year, gives the president the power to make changes to U.S. relations with listed countries, in this case that is Cuba.
Obama “continues to believe Congress should lift the embargo on Cuba and has already taken a number of steps to normalize relations and empower the Cuban people,” National Security Council spokesman Peter Boogaard told ABC News.
“That said, until the Congress acts, the Administration will continue to take prudent and responsible steps to allow commerce and travel, consistent with its authorities and within the continuing constraints of the embargo.”
Officials say that in order to do regulatory changes, like those taken by the administration in January to allow expanded travel under 12-specific licenses, the president needs the authority embedded in the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Without the act, the standing U.S. law with respect to Cuba is the Helms-Burton act, or the embargo, which limits nearly all transactions, travel and business with the island nation.
Congress has made no effort to change the embargo, although legislation was introduced to committee earlier this year that would allow for all travel restrictions to be lifted.
Last month, ABC News learned that the administration has plans underway to make it easier for people to visit and do business with Cuba, through regulation changes at the Treasury Department and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
Those changes however, wouldn’t be possible without the power granted to the administration under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/president-obama-reauthorizes-cuba-listing-trading-enemy-act/story?id=33690036
HAVANA, July 29 A Republican U.S. congressman filed a bill Tuesday to eliminate the decades-long U.S. embargo on Cuba.
U.S. Rep. Tom Emmer, who won a seat in the House of Representatives in 2014, filed the Cuba Trade Act of 2015, which would remove restrictions on American businesses from trading with Cuba and allow Americans to travel to the island.
According to a USA Today report, Emmer decided to pursue a full repeal of the embargo after he visited Cuba in June, where he met with Cuban government officials and other citizens who live on the island.
“I understand there’s a lot of pain on both sides of this issue that goes back many decades, something that a kid from Minnesota is not going to necessarily be able to understand,” Emmer told a USA Today reporter.
“But I believe this is in the best interests of the Cuban people. This isn’t about the Cuban government — it’s about people on the street looking for more opportunity and to improve their quality of life.”
The U.S. embargo on Cuba has been in effect for 55 years.
Move goes further than Obama administration’s easing of travel restrictions
Appropriations committee also votes to end banking curbs for exports to Cuba
HAVANA, July 23 A Republican-controlled Senate panel has voted to lift a decades-long US ban on travel to Cuba, giving a boost to President Barack Obama’s moves to ease travel restrictions and open up relations with Cuba.
The Senate appropriations committee also voted to repeal a law prohibiting banks and other US businesses from financing sales of US agricultural exports to Cuba.
The Obama administration issued rules in January to significantly ease travel restrictions to Cuba and allow regularly scheduled flights for the first time. The committee’s 18-12 vote comes just days after the US and Cuba formally ended more than a half-century of estrangement by re-establishing diplomatic relations cut off during the cold war.
“We have the opportunity to increase the likelihood that Cuban people have greater liberties and freedom with the ability to connect with them,” said sponsor Jerry Moran, a Republican. “I also would say that as Americans we have certain freedoms that we cherish, and Americans can travel around the globe today without exception – no country is totally prohibited with the exception of Cuba.”
The House appropriations committee has moved in the opposite direction, but the intra-party disagreement among Republicans makes it far less likely that the GOP-controlled Congress will try to use spending bills to challenge Obama’s rapprochement with Cuba.
The House provision would block new rules issued in January that would significantly ease travel restrictions to Cuba and allow regularly scheduled flights for the first time.
The Senate language goes beyond the administration rules, which lifted a requirement that US travellers obtain a licence from the Treasury Department before travelling to Cuba. Instead, all that is required is for travellers to assert that their trip would serve educational, religious or other permitted purposes.
“Positive change in Cuba will take time,” said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat. “But it will come not as a result of stubborn nostalgia by a vociferous few for the Batista years, but by visiting Cuba, listening to the Cuban people, and engaging with them.” Fulgencio Batista was Cuba’s dictator before he was overthrown by Fidel Castro in 1959.
The hospitality industry and other business sectors are still blocked from doing business in Cuba. The president of Marriot International, Arne Sorenson, just returned from Cuba and is representative of many companies eager to do business there, especially as more Americans travel to the island.
“With travel to Cuba now surging, existing Cuban hotels are full and hotel companies from other countries are racing to tie up as many of the new hotels as they can before the likes of Marriott and our US competitors show up,” Sorenson said.
The panel’s votes reflect growing sentiment, even among some GOP conservatives, to ease the five-decade-plus Cuba trade embargo and travel restrictions to the island, which have failed to move the Castro regime toward democracy.
“After nearly 60 years, we might try something different,” Moran said.
The panel also voted to lift restrictions on vessels that have shipped goods to Cuba from returning to the US until six months have passed.
The Cuba legislation was added to a $21bn measure funding the Treasury Department, which enforces the longstanding trade embargo.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/23/cuba-travel-ban-should-be-lifted-senate-panel
Photo credit :Tole
HAVANA, July 22 A Florida bank established the first connection with a Cuban counterpart since President Obama’s December decision to open up relations between the two nations.
Stonegate Bank and Banco Internacional de Comercio S.A. (BICSA) signed a deal on Tuesday in Havana that would establish a correspondent account for the Florida-based bank on the island, making it easier for U.S. companies doing business in Cuba to process transactions directly,reported the Wall Street Journal.
Correspondent accounts allow banks to send money back and forth across international borders. Some U.S. business transactions in Cuba use U.S. treasury licenses, but all commercial deals end up going through banks in third countries, adding another step to the process.
These kinds of accounts have come under close scrutiny by federal regulators due to their historical ties to money laundering and other criminal activities, and banks have been hesitant to work with counterparts in other nations that don’t have strong oversight of their banking systems. Cuba has been labeled “high-risk” by the Financial Action Task Force, an organization that supports policies to prevent money laundering.
“We did an extensive risk-management approach to this,” Stonegate Bank CEO Dave Seleski, told the Wall Street Journal. “We feel very comfortable that we did something that is very low risk.”
The move could be the first step toward closer financial ties between the two nations, including the eventual approval of the use of credit cards in Cuba. U.S. credit cards don’t currently work on the island, though the companies have said they would start processing transactions this year.
http://fortune.com/2015/07/22/first-us-cuba-bank-agreement/
HAVANA, July 22 Cuban dancers and the Ballet Nacional de Cuba, founded by Alicia Alonso, are known all over the world. Now that diplomatic relations have been restored between the United States and Cuba, opening the island up for more cultural exchange, what will that mean for Cuba’s ballet scene?
Meghna Chakrabarti spoke with José Manuel Carreño, a Cuban-born former principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater, who is now artistic director of Silicon Valley Ballet, based in San Jose.
“I see it as a good thing. I see it as a great opportunity for Cuban dancers also to explore and dance with other companies,” Carreño said. “Many dancers, they have been defecting and dancing in the United States and in other companies, but I guess this will open up the relation with Cuba, and I think it’s a great thing.”
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/07/22/cuba-ballet-carreno
In this photo taken July 16, 2015, attorneys Grisel Ybarra, left, and Monica Barba Neumann look over documents at their office in Miami. Ybarra and Neumann represent several clients who could face deportation. With the US and Cuba inching closer to fully restoring diplomatic ties, including many as 25,000 immigrants who have outstanding deportation orders live in the U.S. legally but . (AP Photo/Alan Diaz)
HAVANA, July 18 (AP) With the United States and Cuba inching closer to fully restoring diplomatic ties, including re-opening embassies for the first time in 54 years, the future is murky for tens of thousands of Cuban immigrants who have been ordered by immigration authorities to leave the country.
As many as 25,000 Cubans living in the United States have outstanding deportation orders, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They include people who pose a threat to national security or have serious criminal convictions and are considered priorities for immigration enforcement agents.
Despite being an enforcement priority, those immigrants haven’t yet been sent back to Cuba because the government of President Raul Castro has not given them permission to return. It’s unclear whether the Cuban government’s position will change.
Sisi, a 50-year-old grandmother who moved to Miami with her family when she was 4, is one of those waiting and wondering what the future holds.
As a teenager in the 1980s, Sisi married a man involved in South Florida’s booming cocaine trade. By the middle of the decade she’d become involved in the business herself and eventually served 2 ½ years in prison, cutting ties to her brief life of crime in 1989.
Though she served her debt to society for the drug conviction, what she didn’t know at the time was that her criminal record would prompt immigration authorities to issue a deportation order in 2000.
“I was young, stupid. It’s hurting me,” said Sisi, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition that she only be identified by her nickname because of her pending deportation order. “It’s coming back now, a lot.”
For decades deportation to Cuba has been complicated by the lack of diplomatic ties and the Cuban government’s decision not to provide travel documents for most immigrants facing deportation.
A 1984 repatriation agreement includes a list of 2,746 people who had come to the U.S. in 1980 as part of the Mariel boatlift who should be deported. The mass migration from Cuba to Florida started when then-President Fidel Castro announced he would allow anyone who wanted to leave the Communist island nation. An estimated 125,000 Cubans made the perilous trip between April and October 1980.
ICE records show that 1,999 people on that list have been sent back to Cuba, including 1,093 since 2001. ICE is responsible for finding and removing immigrants living in the country illegally and those who have been ordered to leave.
More than 35,000 Cubans have outstanding deportation orders, and as of the end of March, more than 2,300 other Cubans have open cases pending in U.S. immigration court. ICE said of those, about 25,000 are considered deportation priorities because of their backgrounds, including criminal histories.
Sisi’s lawyer, Grisel Ybarra, said the Cuban community is on edge amid the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Havana and the uncertainty about what renewed relations will mean for immigrants.
“Everybody in Miami right now is shaking like a leaf,” Ybarra said. “People are really worried. The Americans and the Cubans are not in bed together, but they already have the room. It’s happening.”
Ybarra said she represents several clients who could face deportation, including Elias, a 71-year-old retiree whose deportation was ordered in 1991. Like Sisi, Elias agreed to speak about his immigration case only on the condition that his full name not published.
Elias said he has two drug-related convictions dating to the 1970s and 1980s. He moved to Florida in 1961, followed by other family members a decade later after his father spent about 10 years in a Cuban prison for being part of a union that opposed Communism. If he is forced to go back to Cuba, he said, he would be alone in a country he would barely recognize.
“I’m going to meet a new country,” Elias said. “I’ve got nobody in Cuba. All my family is here. Anything that I love in this world is here.”
Though the future of migration agreements between Washington and Havana have yet to be laid out publicly, under any circumstances the tens of thousands of Cubans with outstanding deportation orders aren’t likely to be quickly sent home. That’s because ICE already struggles to find and deport immigrants living in the United States.
During the first six months of the 2015 budget year that started in October, the agency has removed about 127,000 immigrants. If that pace holds, ICE will deport the fewest immigrants since the middle of President George W. Bush’s second term in 2006.
If the Cuban government does begin accepting more deportable migrants, they would likely just be added to the ever-growing list of people who risk being expelled from the United States if ICE can find them, according the Migration Policy Center’s Marc Rosenblum.
“There’s definitely going to be a randomness to it,” Rosenblum said.