Florida lawmakers, travel agents row over Cuba trips

[Mika]

Aahh, don'tcha just smell 'Murican freedom™ in this story?


Florida lawmakers, travel agents row over Cuba trips
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jRUvg_Kp2bvFhRQ4BLxLnBqSQLHA

Florida travel agents specializing in Cuba trips are up-in-arms over plans to make them pay more than 100,000 dollars in bonds to fund any probe into irregularities in their dealings with the communist-ruled island.

Such agencies currently put up a one-time bond to the Department of Agriculture of 25,000 dollars.

But new legislation proposed by Florida Republican lawmakers would require the travel firms to pay anywhere between 100,000 and 300,000 dollars.

Representative David Rivera, who is among Florida Republicans sponsoring the bill to the state's House and Senate, said agents specializing in Cuba travel had operated largely under the radar of state and federal law over the years.

"Every other business in Florida is regulated," said Rivera. "This bill provides for reasonable oversight (for Cuba travel.)"

The new legislation was an "anti-terrorism bill" that would require agencies that provide direct travel to any country on the State Department's state sponsor of terror list to pay out the increased bond, he argued.

Cuba is just one of several countries on the list, which also includes nations like Iran, Sudan and North Korea.

Washington has no direct links with Cuba and imposed a trade embargo on the island not long after the 1959 revolution that swept Fidel Castro to power.

Despite a wave of small changes introduced by new Cuban President Raul Castro since he took over from his brother Fidel in February, President George W. Bush's administration says the embargo is not about to be lifted any time soon.

So Cuba travel agents have hit back, vowing to legal action against the state if the bill passes later this week.

Armando Garcia, president of Marazul Charters Travel, said the bill was a calculated "political move" to "take control of the Cuba policy from the federal government and put it on the hands of Florida politicians."

Long-time Cuba trip provider Teresa Aral, head of ABC Charters, added it was ironic that agencies should be forced to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for their own federal investigation if the government accuses them of running foul of the law.

"You are giving them money to investigate yourself -- isn't that the American way?" said Aral.

Travel agents like Garcia and Aral contend the scheme would prove prohibitively expense for many small companies, forcing them out of business.

But Rivera hit back that they should instead complain to the Cuban government, which charges 3,000 dollars per plane to land at Havana Jose Marti Airport and 1,200 dollars to merely fly over the country.

He also notes that in the past enterprising travel agents exploited legal loopholes to provide illegal travel to Cuba.

In February 2007, two Florida men cooked up a scheme to circumvent Cuba travel restrictions by creating fake churches and applying for licenses with the federal government that permit religious groups to go to the island.

Agents in turn say it is the new administration laws on Cuba travel that prompted some to take drastic, albeit illegal measures, to fill the demand for trips to Cuba.

Tourism is one of the main pillars of Cuba's economy, generating more than two billion dollars a year, according to Havana figures.

In 2007 some 2.15 million tourists mainly from Europe and Latin America visited the island, a 3.1 percent decrease over 2006. Cuban officials however are forecasting a recovery for 2008.

During the course of the Bush administration, the White House has systematically tightened restrictions on travel to Cuba.

In 2004, the US government changed the laws allowing Cuban-Americans to return home only once every three years and just to visit immediate family.

"So if you travel today to visit your sick mother back in Cuba, and she dies the following year, you can't go back for the funeral," said Garcia.

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Revolution is the profound conviction that there
is no force in the world capable of destroying
the force of truth and ideas.

[Vogon_Glory]

1. So, Where Is The REST of the Travel Industry On This?

So where is the rest of Florida's travel industry on this matter, and why aren't they doing something to assist these small business owners? Isn't there a professional association of travel agencies? Why aren't THEY busy lobbying against what Texan Molly Ivins would have called a "bad bill"?

I think I've made it clear enough that I don't go into raptures about the Havana regime, but I am d___ tired of Rethugly politicians' efforts to control where we can go, what we can see, and what we can read. Alas, I suspect the Cuban exile hard liners are likely to be able to keep up their antics even long after they become pariahs in the rest of the Cuban emigre community; as long as they're in safely conservative Republican districts, they can keep up with this sort of stuff till term limits run out their clocks for them.

Since it doesn't look likely that the rest of the Florida travel industry isn't going to step up to bat to help deep-six this bill, I fear that the best bet for travel agencies currently situated in Florida is to relocate themselves to someplace where the politicians are slightly saner (Or just willing to welcome new "bidnesses") either across the Florida state line or offshore to Nassau or Freeport.

[Judi Lynn]

2. David Rivera is a grotesquerie. Unbelievable gall. Forcing agencies to pay the government to

investigate them. Perverse.

David Rivera is also the brilliant force behind the idea of cutting off gifts to Cuban immigrants from the U.S. taxpayers in the form of an elaborate outlay of benefits designed specifically to attract Cuban immigrants:

Dubbed the "Travel and Commerce with Terrorist Nations Act," a bill proposed by State Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, would punish those who travel -- even legally -- to Cuba by cutting off access to Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance for a year.

Rivera said the legislation is aimed at stopping recent arrivals who come to the United States, apply for benefits and then travel back to visit Cuba.

Though such travel is legal, Rivera argues that the money spent on the island only helps prop up Cuban leader Castro.

"It's an issue of gratitude," Rivera said at a news conference Tuesday. "People are sick and tired of people living here, taking advantage of taxpayer generosity and then providing financial support to the Castro regime by traveling back to the island."

Under the bill, anyone who has lived in Florida for less than five years and travels to any country the U.S. Department of State lists as a sponsor of terrorism would be ineligible for state services for at least a year.

Besides Cuba, the countries include Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria and Sudan. Because direct charter flights from Florida to any of the other nations are essentially nonexistent, the bill ultimately applies only to Cuba.

http://barkbarkwoofwoof.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_barkbarkwoofwoof_archive.html

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Apparently the dreg of humanity realizes ordinary Americans DO see something peculiar in the fact that even as the radical hardliners chew the scenery over their claims they have "excaped" from Cuba, other Cuban immigrants have come and gone to Cuba regularly (until _Bush nailed the door shut) even as the rest of us were forbidden to travel there under the threat of horrendous fines and legal expenses and a prison stretch, as well, just like Texan Cuba traveller, Dan Snow found out when he attempted to go to Cuba with a group for bass fishing.

[Mika]

3. In Florida, professions regulated by the Fla DPR* face loss of their license if they go to Cuba.

* - Dept of Professional Regulation

I used to go to Cuba to volunteer and exchange techniques. The bastards in the Fl legislature have now nailed the door shut for me and many other dedicated professionals who desire to exchange goodwill with Cuban professionals. It doesn't matter what the next US prez or congress mandates, the knuckle dragging neanderthals in the legislature force the Fl DPR to revoke licenses.

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Just take a peek at the evil doings of the evildoer nation of Cuba... :sarcasm:


Cuba's Vice-President Carlos Lage, second right, looks at Chukwemeka Anene-Nzeiu, a
student from Nigeria, showing his diploma during a graduation ceremony at the Karl
Marx theatre students of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, Tuesday,
July 24, 2007. About 2,100 students from about 25 countries, including eight Americans,
graduated Tuesday from the Cuban Latin American School of Medicine, including about
1,200 medical doctors, as well as dentists, nurses and medical technicians.



Katia Milaray, a student from Chile, showing her diploma during a graduation ceremony
at the Karl Marx theatre students of the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana



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[Judi Lynn]

4. That doesn't sound like a decision you'd expect from grown-up people, does it? Petty, childish

manipulation into areas which are simply none of their business has become so easy for the Florida state politicians from special interest groups which in NO WAY represent the will of American people.

They've bent and perverted our system so long it's barely recognizable. It's a shame people have simply stood by and let it happen.

If they really wanted to see change in Cuba they would allow interaction between national Cubans and their American counterparts, just the way Cubans and Americans would prefer. What this group of idiots want is NO CHANGE WHATSOEVER. They only want violent war against the people of Cuba, and their return to power, and the reverse of all that progress made by the very people whom they and their parents and grandparents dominated, exploited, and abused in earlier times.

It's was the mistreatment of Cuban people by the politicians and oligarchy which triggered the revolution in the first place. Cuba will never want them back, no matter how long they wage war against them from Florida. They will NEVER wear them down and make them beg for mercy.

Florida should have its own revolution against this thuggery, and send them packing to Spain or whatever place could stand them. You recall 33 countries refused to accept bomber/mass murderer/Miami hero Orlando Bosch. Without a doubt they would also refuse to accept a lot of the most powerful South Florida hardliner personalities, as well, if they were given the choice.

How many nations would throw open their doors to Vigilia Mambisa "rent a riot" organizer, Miguel Saavedra, seen here chasing a pro-Chavez Venezuelan demonstrator down the street in Miami, as his bull horn zeros in on his dome? Or Jose Basulto, a man who spent decades of his life terrorizing Cubans? Or any of the others who, through ultra violent acts brought the F.B.I. to name Miami "Terror Capital of the United States?"



In the meantime, even under the relentless assault from these barbarians, Cubans have worked hard to lift the entire general polulation's health and living standards to the level they enjoy today, starting in the time when so many had no steady income, and lived on seasonal work relating to harvesting sugar cane, etc., under wretched, heart-wrenching conditions, squalor, unbelievable hardship.

Great photos of some new graduates, some people in medicine because of their own principles, Mika. The Cuban approach really separates the wheat from the chaff, to use an ancient reference.