Reply #32: For the record: excerpts from the debate transcript

[Osolomia]

From the Congressional Record for September 9, 2003 at http://thomas.loc.gov

Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The Flake-McGovern-Emerson-Delahunt amendment is very simple. It prohibits any funds in this bill from being used to enforce the regulations that restrict United States citizens from traveling to Cuba. Under current law, ordinary Americans cannot travel to Cuba unless they fit into narrowly defined categories and endure an arduous bureaucratic application and screening process.

In March of this year, while a sweeping crackdown in sentencing was going on in Cuba, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, under the direction of the State Department, eliminated the people-to-people category of travel licenses to Cuba. This is in direct opposition to the administration's stated intent to increase people-to-people contact with ordinary Cubans. My amendment would effectively end the travel ban and allow ordinary Americans to travel to Cuba and to take their ideals and values to ordinary Cubans.

This is an issue of freedom for Americans. Let me repeat that. This is an issue of freedom for Americans.

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Whether we like it or not, Cuba's economic troubles will not lead to political instability. We should not base our policy on the hope that economic catastrophe will cause suffering, political unrest and ultimately political change. If we base our policy on this hope, we will be waiting a long, long time over and above the period that we have already waited. Instead, we ought to unleash the real source of American influence by allowing all Americans to travel freely to Cuba, just as Cuban-Americans are currently allowed to do.

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Cubans want contact with Americans. Cuban dissidents regularly tell us that they oppose the travel ban because they believe that American travelers have a positive impact in Cuba.

It is time to listen to the Cuban people, and it is time to return to our basic American values. Americans deserve the freedom to travel to Cuba to see the island for themselves. I urge my colleagues to support the Flake-McGovern-Emerson-Delahunt amendment.

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Flake-McGovern-Emerson-Delahunt amendment to limit funding for the enforcement of the travel ban to Cuba. This amendment is offered on behalf of the 52-member bipartisan Cuba Working Group.

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I agree with Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that the 40-plus years of a U.S. policy of isolation has not contributed to the betterment of human rights in Cuba and, in many respects, has had a negative impact on human rights and that the travel ban should end.

I agree with the vast majority of dissidents living on the island, including Vladimiro Roca, president of the Cuban Social Democratic Party, and Oswaldo Paya, leader of the democratic reform movement known as the Varela Project, who have expressed their full support for an end on the ban on travel by Americans to Cuba.

I agree with independent journalist Miriam Leiva, wife of imprisoned dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe, when she wrote to President Bush this May declaring: ``The visits of hundreds of thousands of North Americans to Cuba could contribute to the exchange of ideas and the progress of democracy.''

This amendment represents the bipartisan majority of this Congress and the majority view of the American people. It represents the mainstream view in this country.

For 3 consecutive years, this House has voted overwhelmingly to lift the ban on travel, only to have a small group of Members undermine the will of the House in conference committee. I would say to the leadership of this House, do not just talk about democracy; respect democracy. Respect the will of this House. Respect the Members of the greatest deliberative body in the world. Do not hide behind closed doors and secret negotiations. Do not hide behind rhetoric that questions the integrity of those who disagree with you.

The current policy has failed. It is time to take a new approach. Support the freedom of Americans to travel, support Cubans who want to interact and meet with Americans, support the bipartisan amendment to end the travel ban on Cuba.

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Mr. SMITH of Michigan. Mr. Chairman, through you to my colleagues, it has been 43 years that we have had this embargo with Cuba. It has not worked. It seems to me we should do one of two things: we should either make the pain greater for the Cuban people, as we so with the embargo, or we should make some changes to improve communications.

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I think it should be clear that none of us support Castro. None of us disagree that Castro is bad. None of us disagree it would be good to have Castro out of the way. The question is, how do we do something better than what we have done for the last 43 years?

We talk about some of the prisoners, saying, keep up the pain and keep your embargo going. I would quote one of the prisoners, Espenosa Chapa, who said, ``The policy of isolating Cuba, far from bringing freedom, has only served to give the regime an alibi that the embargo is the cause of all the ills the country suffers, and it has kept Cuban society away from a greater flow of democratic ideas and values.''

Mr. DELAHUNT.

The magnitude of the failure of this policy is so colossal that it is inconceivable that we continue to pursue it. Because while it has not benefited the Cuban people, it has also diminished American freedoms. As the former Supreme Court Justice William Douglas once said, and I am quoting, ``Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society, setting us apart. It often makes all other rights meaningful.''

Imagine travel police who tell you where you can go and how much you can spend when you are there, even if you simply want to scatter the ashes of a beloved parent like one American citizen did. That does not sound like America travel police, but it is. That is the reality. We have our own travel police. It is called the Office of Foreign Asset Control, or OFAC. They decide who will go to Cuba and who does not. They insist that you account to them what you did there when you arrived and what you spent. If they do not believe you, they can punish you. They have even threatened to garnish Social Security benefits from one individual.

We should all be offended as Americans by this policy.

So yes, this debate today is about democracy. It is all about democracy; our democracy as well as democracy in Cuba.

This amendment would end this affront to American liberty and American rights. What makes the curtailment of this freedom of Americans so particularly repugnant is the hypocrisy of the policy. For example, and others have alluded to it: Americans can travel today to Iran, to North Korea, the remaining members of the axis of evil club. And remember when Saddam Hussein was in power, you could go to Baghdad and use your American Express card. You cannot do it in Havana.

Those who would maintain the status quo and continue to deny Americans the freedom to travel proclaim that all Cuba has to do is to conduct free and fair elections, legalize all political parties, allow freedom of the press and association, permit the existence of independent labor unions, and then, we will restore to Americans their freedom to travel. Those are worthy goals.

Well, if the rights of Americans to travel are predicated on these standards, then how about Egypt, a one-party State where elections are a sham, where political and religious dissent is repressed, and freedom of the press is restricted. But for Egypt, the penalty, the penalty is $2 billion worth of American foreign aid every year.

What about Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive regimes on earth according to our own State Department, where women can not drive, and where American soldiers could not practice their religion openly on Saudi soil.

Well, I have seen women driving in Cuba, and I have attended mass in Havana with Cuban dissidents. And 15 of the terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11 were from Saudi Arabia. There was not a Cuban among them. And yet, some of the most ardent proponents of the Cuba travel policy today vote for United States assistance to Saudi Arabia. Is it not time to end the hypocrisy? We ought not to be the land of the licensed, but the land of the free.

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Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Arizona. I am also a proud member of the working group, the Cuban working group that was established almost 2 years ago, and I have to tell my colleagues, as someone from California, I am on the other side of the country, but I know that many in my district in Los Angeles and throughout California have had the chance to visit and also meet with people from Cuba. One of the things they tell me as a Congresswoman is that they would love to be able to go and spend more money there, to interact through educational programs, to visit different tourist sites there, but to engage with the people there.

On my visit there 2 years ago, I found it very striking that yes, indeed, the free market is working. It is working in Cuba. I visited a small restaurant where I sat with the family who owned their own restaurant. The money that we gave them in dollars was sufficient at the time. Maybe if we did more of that, they would be able to have a lot more, but we are not allowing for that. We need to lift the travel ban. Even in the State of California, where I served as a member of the Senate, our Senate members voted for a resolution to come to this House to say that we ought to lift the travel ban. By opening up our doors of education, culturally, and also economically, we have a lot to gain as well.

I had the opportunity to meet with other people from different countries in Cuba, from Canada and from Europe, and I saw that they are indeed taking advantage of helping to create a market base there, in different areas, and in agriculture, in the arts, and in the hotel and tourism industry. Why is not the United States, why cannot California engage in that by lifting this travel ban and allowing for the free flow of ideas and exchange, something that all of us here I think believe in.

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Flake amendment which would prohibit funds in the underlying bill to enforce the current ban on travel to Cuba.

I believe it is the right of all Americans to be able to travel wherever they choose. It is unAmerican to prohibit our citizens from choosing where they want to travel.

And why? Why should we single out Cuba? We have a right to travel almost anywhere. This is clearly not about whether U.S. citizens should travel to an undemocratic or militarily repressive country. If that were true, then Americans would not be able to travel to countries such as China, Sudan, Syria, Iran, North Korea. And do you know what? Americans are able to travel freely to these countries. Yet, they are forbidden to travel to Cuba.

Thus, the real question is why do we continue to prohibit travel to Cuba? Why do we deny American citizens a right Cubans are denied in Cuba, to travel freely? Human rights activists Elizardo Sanchez and Vladimiro Roca have said it best, and I quote, ``Just as we insist on the right of Cubans to travel, to leave and return to our country freely, a right now denied to us, so do we support the right of Americans to travel freely, including travel to Cuba.''

The travel ban is an archaic part of our archaic foreign policy on Cuba. We are not defending the Cuban government or its poor human rights record, especially in light of the most recent crackdown on its dissidents. We must always speak strongly against the abuse of human rights in this world and hold these repressive governments accountable.

But Cuban dissidents regularly tell us that they oppose the travel ban because they believe American travelers would have a positive impact on Cuba. Further, Human Rights Watch reports that the U.S. embargo has not only failed to bring about human rights improvements in Cuba, it has actually, and I quote, ``become counterproductive to achieving this goal.''

Current U.S. policy towards Cuba hurts the 11 million innocent Cuban men, women and children who could benefit from our travel, our new ideas, our steadfast belief in democratic ideals, freedoms and way of life. We will not advance rights to the Cuban people by embracing a policy of isolation that has failed for 40 years.

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Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake) for yielding me time.

Let us face it. This is not a problem about Castro. This is a problem about us. We made this law. And this administration wants to enforce this law. This is not about Fidel Castro. This is about the present administration and Members of Congress.

It is very interesting that those who do not want to lift this ban are also exempt from it. Cuban-Americans, can travel freely back without our country's permission. And as Members of Congress, you can travel to Cuba, but you cannot do that as a regular American citizen.

What has this law done? Has it prevented Americans from going to Cuba? Absolutely not. It is estimated 100,000 Americans went to Cuba last year, 75 percent of them went illegally. Why are they going to Cuba? It is only 90 miles off our coast. That is probably why they are not going to Iraq and North Korea and other places which the President identifies as the axis of evil, and our government does not ban you from going there.

They are also fascinated by the history Cuba played in the American Revolutionary War. They are fascinated by a country that wins music Emmys. They are fascinated by a country and culture that produces good rum and cigars, yet it is illegal for Americans to drink that rum or smoke those cigars. It is illegal for Americans to have fun. That is what this law says.

It is so un-American. It is so unpatriotic. It is so unenforceable. What are we going to do? Put everybody who went down there to ride bicycles, to dance, to drink mojitos in jail? That is not what our country can do. We cannot enforce this law. And to say that nobody can travel there, and when they will go illegally you will stop that, what you are doing is stopping the legitimate travel of educators, of doctors, of people in professions that want to go to try to upgrade humanity.

Human rights organizations are certainly going to know more about the abuses in Cuba by sending people who are interested in human rights as good ambassadors. The law now does not allow that to happen.

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Mr. FLAKE.

I also wanted to respond to whether or not this is a good use of taxpayer dollars to actually use these dollars to enforce the travel ban as opposed to actually wage the war on terrorism.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department currently spends between 10 and 20 percent of its resources actually enforcing the Cuba travel ban. This is the office charged with the task of tracking down al Qaeda money, to actually shutting down the international war on terrorism, the financial war; yet they are spending over 10 percent of its resources tracking down, in essence, grandmothers from Iowa who are going on a biking trip to Cuba or the gentleman from Washington who spent less than 24 hours in Cuba to scatter his parents' ashes at the churches they built in the 1950s. The man returned home to a fine, enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control.

I would submit that if we are serious about the war on terrorism then we will stop this charade of actually limiting Americans' ability to travel.

Let us stipulate that Fidel Castro is a bad guy. He is a horrible guy, he is a thug, I have said it many times from this podium; but our hatred for Castro should not cause us to punch ourselves in the face, and that is what we are doing in essence here, by imposing upon the American people a ban on their right to travel. We simply should not do that.

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Mr. FLAKE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time.

I appreciate the comments from the other side. I would maintain that none of us really know when Fidel Castro is telling the truth and when he is not.

I do not think that we should pretend that we do. I do not think we should even try. Therefore, we simply ought to adopt a policy that is right and consistent with our objectives. That is what ending the travel ban is all about. It is doing what is good policy regardless of whether we think Fidel Castro supports it or whether he does not.

I should mention there are others that have called for an end to the travel ban, other dissidents. Oscar Espinosa Chepe has been cited here a couple of times. This is a man I met just weeks before he was imprisoned in what for him may be a life sentence. He said, ``When the travel of Americans to Cuba is approved, the struggle for democracy and freedom will by no means end. To the contrary, these measures create better conditions to achieve these objectives.''

That is what we are trying to do here. We are trying to comport with the wishes of the dissident community in Cuba and to do what is right for us as well, to lift the ban on Americans to travel.

We need today to strike a blow for freedom. We can do that by allowing Americans to travel freely as they wish.

If it is freedom that we want for the Cuban people, let us start by exercising a little more of it ourselves by allowing our citizens to travel to Cuba and to take their values with them.

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Ms. LEE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of the Flake Amendment to end the unnecessary and counterproductive ban on travel to Cuba, and I want to recognize and applaud both Mr. Flake and Mr. Delahunt for their outstanding leadership on this issue and the agenda of the House Cuba Working Group….

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Mr. Speaker, the obsession with Cuba is two-fold: Those who support the travel ban are driven by 44-year-old memories of the revolution. Americans, who are eager to travel, are drawn to the rich, vibrant Cuban culture. Along with most of my constituents, I belong to the latter group which believes that we have much to learn from each other.

The Oakland City Council in 1998 passed a resolution to eliminate the trade sanctions against Cuba and the Bay Area has numerous sister-city relations with Cubans; these exchanges benefit students, arts initiatives, encourage humanitarian projects and research sharing for important diseases like HIV/AIDS, kidney failure and high blood pressure.

Farmers across the country are eager to engage in trade with Cuba as the U.S. economy continues to plummet.

The recent elimination of the people-to-people category, within the OFAC regulations, proves again how the administration is more concerned with maintaining a grudge than reinstating the American right to travel.

Mr. Chairman, not only does the travel and trade embargo undermine and contradict the values upon which our great country is based, but they are also very costly and logistically difficult to administer between the Departments of State, Treasury, and Commerce. We should not be persecuting Americans who are guilty of nothing more than a sense of curiosity and eagerness to learn and explore our island neighbor, Cuba.