Word: cubans
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...first time, there are hard numbers to show that Herrero is far from alone. Last year, a majority of Miami Cuban Americans said they favored dumping tight regulations on Cuban-American travel to Cuba - something candidate Barack Obama pledged to do and then did this year as President. And a recent poll found that a remarkable 59% of all Cuban Americans think the 46-year-old ban on all U.S. travel to Cuba should be removed. The survey by Miami-based Bendixen & Associates, the largest Hispanic polling firm, also found that 48% of older and more conservative Cuban exiles known...
...importance of this attitude shift can't be underestimated. Whenever Congress has tried in the past to strike down the Cuba travel ban - even when a majority of Americans said they wanted to get rid of it - the biggest obstacle has always been the staunch resistance of politically potent Cuban-American voters. But the newest bill, the freedom to travel to Cuba act, introduced this year in both the House and Senate, suddenly has Cuban-American backing - and as a result a decidedly better chance of passing. In a recent statement, Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, a Republican and co-sponsor...
...reason is that while Cuban-American voters may still favor the trade embargo - though recent polls indicate support for that is fading fast, too, especially as more young Cuban Americans and recently arrived Cuban immigrants register to vote - they no longer see the travel ban as an inseparable component. In fact, they see lifting the ban as a way to throw a bigger ball into Havana's court, one that might oblige current Cuban President Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother, to release more jailed dissidents or make other reform gestures...
...Another is the questionable legality of letting only one group of Americans travel to Cuba. Says Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a Miami-based organization of business and community leaders, "After the loosening of restrictions for Cuban Americans by the Obama Administration, it will be increasingly difficult for the government to respect the liberties of one narrow group while restricting them for a broader group." Democratic U.S. Representative William Delahunt of Massachusetts, who introduced the new travel-to-Cuba bill in the House, where it now has 180 co-sponsors, agrees: "Anyone can go to Vietnam...
...every Cuban American agrees, of course. Jose Azel, 61, left Cuba at age 13 as part of Operation Pedro Pan, an effort by the Roman Catholic Church that brought 14,000 unaccompanied minors to the U.S. from Cuba in the early 1960s. He has never gone back. "I am a political exile by definition, which means I left because I found the political conditions to be deplorable," says Azel, who today is a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. "Until those conditions change, I will not return." But while...