A Friday announcement by President Donald Trump that he is reversing key parts of the Obama administration’s policy changes toward Cuba likely won’t spell the end to group and educational trips for Valley residents, but it will make travel to the island more difficult for many.
Under the new policy shift, which restores previous travel and business restrictions, Americans will no longer be able to travel to Cuba for individual trips. Those who travel to the island in approved educational trips will face additional rules and scrutiny.
“What all this suggests is that the Trump administration is going to empower the border inspection people to do a whole lot more enforcement,” said Flavio Risech-Ozeguera, an associate professor of law and ethnic studies at Hampshire College, which has operated a study-abroad program in Cuba for more than 16 years.
In December 2014, President Barack Obama announced a process to normalize relations with Cuba. As part of those changes, Americans wanting to take a private trip to Cuba could declare that they were complying with Treasury Department regulations allowing travel to Cuba for only specific purposes like education.
Those so-called “people to people” exchange trips were previously allowed for group-travel only, but the Obama administration’s détente meant that individual travelers could use that category as a kind of loophole to visit the island. Under Trump’s announced changes, “people to people” exchanges will only be allowed for groups again.
The changes will not take place, however, until the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control writes the new regulations, which the office said in an announcement that it expects to do in the coming months.
Risech-Ozeguera, a Cuban-American himself and one of the rotating faculty-in-residence in Havana during the Hampshire College’s trips, said the college’s educational trips won’t likely be affected at all. That additional scrutiny, he said, is primarily meant to discourage Americans from traveling to the island as tourists.
“The impact of the announcement is to instill fear in American travelers,” he said.
Risech-Ozeguera did say, however, that there still could be some impact on Hampshire College’s educational tours for alumni and friends of the college.
Another restriction Trump announced is that U.S. companies and citizens would be restricted from doing business with entities that the Cuban military controls — a potentially broad category, Risech-Ozeguera said, given the fact that Cuba has a planned economy in which the state owns most enterprises.
Depending on which Cuban tour agencies and hotels are blacklisted as military-operated, problems could arise for tour groups. Risech-Ozeguera didn’t think, however, that the new rule would be a permanent impediment to those trips either.
Travel restrictions between the United States and Cuba have long shifted, and Risech-Ozeguera said they’ve done little to force political change on Cuba’s communist government.
“There’s no reason to suppose that doing the same thing over and over is going to yield a new result,” he said.
That sentiment was shared by U.S. Congressman Richard Neal, D-Springfield, who reacted negatively to Trump’s Friday announcement.
“Not only will American workers and businesses miss out on opportunities in Cuba, but the livelihoods of the Cuban people will be diminished,” Neal said in a statement. “The best way to achieve a constructive outcome with Cuba is to engage, not turn our back.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.