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US Policy Towards Cuba Is Hurting Innocent People
House of Representatives - January 17, 2007

Madam Speaker, there is one nation in the world where seeding democracy right now might take root. It is Cuba. It is only 90 miles away from our shores, but we are using the same sort of wrong-headed thinking regarding Cuba that we are using in international affairs around the world with equally dismal results.

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Today the Bush administration has draconian travel restrictions in place for any American trying to visit family members in Cuba. It is their idea of promoting democracy by punishing the people we are trying to befriend. It makes no difference if a relative is well, sick or dying in Cuba. You get one chance every 3 years to visit Cuba legally. If an American visits a relative in Cuba and that relative is stricken by a heart attack the day after you leave, you cannot go back for 3 years.

The administration thinks that by cutting off families in Cuba from loved ones in the United States, they will encourage the overthrow of Castro.

When will we ever learn? This policy plays right into the hands of those who want to portray the United States as an arrogant bully willing to use innocent people as a wedge against a regime we don't like.

Our policy regarding Cuba is hurting innocent people here and there, not the government we have been trying to overthrow for a generation. It has hurt one of my constituents, an Iraq war hero, who came to the United States from Cuba 15 years ago risking his life coming on a raft floating in the ocean.

Sergeant Carlos Lazo made national headlines last year when he tried to get to Cuba to visit his teenage sons. Carlos is a man who joined the Washington National Guard to give service to his new country.

As a combat medic in Iraq, he risked his life to save others, and for his heroism he was awarded the Bronze Star. I had the honor to pin that medal on him in a ceremony in Seattle last year.

Carlos is an American citizen, a decorated war hero, and he is barred from boarding a flight to visit his family in Cuba. That is not how you promote democracy in Cuba or anywhere else for that matter. And the fact is, there are countless stories just like Carlos. It makes no diplomatic or strategic sense. We hurt U.S. interests by hurting U.S. citizens who reach out to family in Cuba.

Who could possibly be a better ambassador representing the United States than the blood relative of someone living in Cuba? The most powerful statement we could ever make to the people of Cuba is to let them interact with Americans who are related by blood or marriage.

Are the Cubans more likely to listen to U.S. propaganda or to a son or to a daughter? The answer is obvious, and it should be just as obvious that the U.S. needs to revise its travel ban to Cuba.

As it stands now, we are separating families. Instead, we should be reuniting loved ones. We don't promote freedom by denying it to innocent civilians, and we don't make new friends anywhere when an American citizen is denied the ability to visit a dying mother in Cuba. Imagine the propaganda of a press release, Americans barred from visiting mother on death bed in Cuba. A story like that can and will be used against us all over the world.

We don't gain from a policy that forces separate families, and it is time to change. We don't have to lift the embargo against Cuba to restore family relations among Cubans and their relatives who live in America. We have a real opportunity to make progress promoting democracy in Cuba, and we ought to take it.

We need to revise the U.S. travel policy to Cuba to recognize that the American people are the best ambassadors we could ever deploy. Every visit by an American citizen to a loved one in Cuba will do more to promote freedom and democracy than all the leaflets and all the broadcasts and all the saber rattling that we have tried unsuccessfully in the last half century. We don't need to tear down a wall, we do need to tear up a policy and start over, and we should do it now.