• Submitted by: manso
• United States
• Politics and Government
• 09 / 03 / 2010

---

The unofficial word in Washington is that the Obama administration plans to relax limits on travel to Cuba for professional, educational and artistic purposes.

Some travel promoters are gearing up to handle potentially hundreds of thousands more visits.

Cuba Education Tours, a Canadian outfit, is urging Americans to start booking trips before the anticipated rules change.

“There is no need to wait for changes from Washington and be left out on account of overbooked tours and too few rooms and services,” the group says in an e-mail message touting their licensed services.

The tour group promotes a Boomers Whole Cuba Tour, a Havana International Jazz Festival Tour, a New Years Teachers Introduction to Cuba Tour and others detailed at http://CubaFriends.com/

“Cubans are eager to meet you and make friends with their northern cousins,” says Marcel Hatch, education director for the group.

Canadians have long traveled to Cuba without restraint.

The administration has not announced the change, but sources say it will come later this year, perhaps after the mid-term elections in November.

The new rules would not undo the U.S. embargo, nor would they open the floodgates to American tourists. They would ease restrictions on visas for selected purposes — business, educational or artistic — that were imposed by former President George W. Bush.

Essentially U.S. officials would return to the policy of the Bill Clinton administration, which encouraged people-to-people encounters with Cubans.

Most Cuban-American leaders in South Florida support limits on travel to try to isolate Cuba and deprive the Castro regime of tourism dollars. But many in Congress are pressing to remove the travel ban for all Americans, saying more contact and communication would encourage reforms in Cuba.

President Barack Obama last year fulfilled his campaign promise to allow Cuban-Americans to visit their families and to send unlimited amounts of money to Cuba.

Relaxed rules that make it easier for special groups to visit the island is the next incremental step toward closer engagement with Florida’s estranged neighbor.

By William E. Gibson, Washington Bureau

Source: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/n