Vol. 73/No. 34      September 7, 2009

Orbitz says it has collected 50,000 signatures on an online petition urging the U.S. government to end the 50-year travel ban. Orbitz launched the campaign in May.

“Travel—and the resulting exchange of ideas between people from different countries can be a powerful force for positive change,” Barney Hartford, the company’s chief operating officer, said in a letter to Orbitz customers. As an incentive, customers who sign on are eligible for a $100 coupon toward a vacation in Cuba—redeemable only if the travel ban is lifted and Orbitz can sell flights and tour packages. While its profits are down as a result of the current economic crisis, the company has sales of nearly $750 million a year.

Hartford says that the company’s position is “aligned with that of Human Rights Watch. Echoing Washington’s hatred of the Cuban Revolution, Human Rights Watch backs moves “to chip away at Castro’s repressive machinery,” according to a statement posted on its Web site, but complains that the travel ban and U.S. embargo of Cuba are “ineffective.”

Except for a few years in the late 1970s, Washington has banned travel to Cuba since the early 1960s as part of imposing an embargo on virtually all U.S. trade with the island. This was done in retaliation for the revolution by workers and farmers, which overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and nationalized U.S.-owned sugar plantations and oil refineries, placing them under the control of working people.

When U.S. courts struck down a regulation barring travel to Cuba on U.S. passports in 1967, Washington found another way to impose a ban—by making it illegal to spend money or conduct “travel transactions” in Cuba. These new rules did not apply to Cuban Americans.

In April, President Barack Obama lifted restrictions imposed in 2004 by then-president George W. Bush, limiting visits to the island by Cuban Americans to once every three years. Obama kept the ban on other U.S. passport holders.

Besides tightening travel restrictions on Cuban Americans, the Bush administration deployed dozens of Treasury Department agents to fine U.S. travelers to Cuba who violated the rules. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Obama administration has eased up on this also.

Orbitz is backing legislation in Congress known as the “Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act.” Sponsored by about one-third of members in the House and Senate, the act would end direct or “indirect” bans on Cuba travel.

Even if passed, which is unlikely since it is not backed by Obama, the bill would still allow the ban to be reimposed in case of “war with Cuba, armed hostilities between the two countries” or if the president decides there is “imminent danger to the public health or the physical safety” of U.S. travelers.

Hoping there will be a further easing of travel restrictions, the governments of two Florida cities—Key West and Tampa—recently requested that their airports be declared ports of entry for travel to Cuba. Currently only airports in Miami, Los Angeles, and New York are allowed to operate flights to and from Cuba.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury Department continues to enforce the embargo. In July, American Power Conversion was fined $10,341 for selling electrical regulators to Cuba; First Incentive Travel, Inc. was fined $8,250 for arranging travel to Cuba for non-U.S. citizens.  
 
 
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