• Submitted by: lena campos
• Travel and Tourism
• 08 / 24 / 2012

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Authorized by President Obama last year as a way to boost Americans' engagement with everyday Cubans despite a five-decade U.S. trade embargo, "people-to-people" programs to the communist island have been put on hold.

According to a recent column by Detroit Free Press travel writer Ellen Creager, almost no organizations with previous people-to-people licenses from the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) have received renewals. Advertised trips have been scrapped, she writes, and organizations "are left to wait without any updates or information."

Jeff Braunger, program manager for Cuba Travel Licensing under the Treasury Department, told the Free Press "we have issued approximately 140 people-to-people licenses. We are doing our best to process both first-time applications and requests to renew existing licenses. We receive numerous such requests which are being handled in turn. It is our goal to respond in a timely manner.''

But Jim Friedlander, president of the travel service provider Academic Arrangements Abroad in New York, told the paper "we work with about 30 different non-profit organizations that have programs to Cuba in next 12 months, and 100% of them have not received renewals of licenses."

"It's a wait-and-see game," added Christopher Baker, a Cuba guidebook author and tour leader for U.S. organizations.

Thanks to the longstanding U.S. embargo against Cuba, most Americans have never visited the country unless they traveled under a family or religious visa. And as I discovered during an Insight Cuba "Weekend in Havana" tour in May, the new people-to-people alternatives are no salsa-and-cigar-fueled beach escapes. Under U.S. rules, they require mandatory participation in "a full-time schedule of educational exchange activities."

But the programs have been wildly popular, with many sold out or wait-listed through the end of 2012. In May, in response to reports of "abuses," the Treasury Department tightened regulations for its people-to-people licenses. It now requires U.S. companies to provide a sample itinerary, assign a representative to each tour and explain how the exchanges would "enhance contact with the Cuban people, support civil society, and/or help promote the Cuban people's independence from Cuban authorities."

The OFAC license application grew from six pages to "essentially hundreds of pages," writes the Free Press, and "organizations seeking renewal had to document every minute of every day for every single trip they had done in the past year" to prove they were not engaging in regular tourism.

"OFAC's licensing procedures have always been slow and methodical," says Cuba expert Baker. "I'd like to think the current logjam reflects nothing more than a surfeit of applications, but it is an election year and one can't rule out a possible desire to tread slowly."

Source: USAToday.com