Cuba Travel & Embargo: Pro-Cuba Group Urges United States to Change Policy on Cuba
A new advocacy group called #CubaNow is urging President Obama and the United States to change its policy toward Cuba by launching an advertising campaign in Washington, D.C., Monday.
The group has placed posters in the metro system highlighting economic changes occurring in Cuba. They believe the 52-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba has not worked.
"It's time to bring the conversation on U.S.-Cuba policy into the 21st century," #CubaNow director Ric Herrero said.
The group said its mission is focused on changing the way the U.S. thinks about Cuba and its policies against the communist-led country.
The group opposes the embargo against Cuba but knows that getting it reversed in Congress is a hefty task. They said there are other ways to change policy, like allowing all Americans to travel to Cuba.
"There's plenty the president can do within his existing authority," said #CubaNow founding member Andres Díaz, a Cuban-born former Obama administration official at the Department of Commerce.
#CubaNow is a youthful group, consisting mostly of younger generation Cuban Americans.
Five years ago, Obama allowed Cuban-Americans the freedom to travel to Cuba to visit relatives as well as the right to send remittances.
That change in policy helped "usher in more change in that time than had been seen in the previous 50 years," the group said in a press release.
Herrero and #CubaNow wants more changes and wants the White House to take "new steps" to encourage Cuba's rapidly growing private sector, which has come about thanks to economic reforms slowly being introduced by the Cuban government.
New reforms were announced Monday that included loosening the regulation of Cuba's largest state-run minerals, tourism and telecommunications companies.
#CubaNow's founding is just part of recent efforts to persuade Obama into taking bolder steps to engage the Cuban government.
A poll released in February shows that most Americans want to normalize relations with Cuba, and in November, Obama hinted that it could be time to "update" U.S.-Cuban policies.
"We encourage Congress to review our current legislative framework toward Cuba and modernize it, but the Cuban people aren't waiting for conditions to be ideal and for our politicians to move," Herrero said.
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