Word: miami
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...long ago, Ricardo Herrero was one of Miami's Cuban-American hard-liners, an ardent supporter of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba as well as the ban on U.S. travel to the communist island. But a half-dozen trips to Cuba during this decade have changed his mind about the latter. "There are no better ambassadors of American culture and American democracy than Americans themselves," says Herrero, 31. Many fellow Cuban Americans who've traveled there, he adds, have come to the same conclusion: they "always come back saying it was a completely eye-opening experience" and have "changed...
...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...
...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...
...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 he supports the travel ban, Azel recognizes the views of the old guard are changing. "Exiles themselves have changed," he says. "They have moved from a bellicose military approach and understand that...
...meantime, more Cuban Americans are pouring into Cuba after Obama's relaxation of the travel and remittance rules for those with family on the island. The number of those travelers is expected to hit 200,000 this year, says Armando Garcia, president of Mar Azul Charters in Miami. That would be double the annual flow since 2004, when then President George W. Bush put the restrictions in place. If the travel ban were lifted altogether, recent studies suggest some 3 million Americans would visit Cuba each year. It's uncertain whether they would be effective ambassadors. But after almost...