Over 100 Democratic House members signed a letter Thursday urging President Joe Biden to lift restrictions that make it harder for people to send remittances and goods to Cuba, including food and medicine.
The United Nations has repeatedly urged the United States to suspend U.S. regulations that prevent food, medicine, and other humanitarian assistance from reaching the Cuban people. We support a more comprehensive shift to deepen engagement with Cuba and the normalization of U.S.- Cuba relations. The letter was signed by 114 Democratic House members, including Barbara Lee of California, the chair of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, Rules Committee Chair James McGovern of Massachusetts and Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meeks of New York.
The country's economy fell by 11 percent last year, and the government says it began to grow slowly this year, at 2 percent. Cuba's shortage of food, medicine and other basic necessities has been worsened by decades of U.S. sanctions that were tightened under former President Donald Trump, as well as the country's Soviet-style centrally planned economy. The coronaviruses epidemic exacerbated the situation.
Biden promised in his campaign to lift restrictions on travel and remittances that were imposed during the Trump years, as well as restaffling the U.S. Embassy, but so far that has not happened.
The U.S. has suspended flights to nine airports in Cuba, so travelers can only travel to Havana's airport. The Western Union had to close 407 locations throughout Cuba after Trump banned remittances through its partner, the military-owned Fincimex.
The Biden administration says Cuba policy has been under review for more than a year. After historic protests in July in which thousands of people took to the streets, the U.S. hit the pause button, said Juan Gonzalez, the senior director of the National Security Council for the Western Hemisphere.
After the protests, the Biden administration created a Remittance Working Group to study how U.S. families could send remittances to their relatives without Cuba's government and military profiting. The White House was given recommendations for restarting remittances in November, but sent some back for further work.
The members of Congress pushed back against the delay.
We are still waiting for action, according to the letter. In the past, the government captures less revenue from remittances due to changes in July 2020, and much of the government s revenue is used for essential food, fuel, and goods imports for Cubans who do not have family abroad, many of them in marginalized communities. The letter noted that the U.S. does not restrict remittances to most sanctioned countries and that the Biden administration has restarted remittances to Afghanistan through Western Union, showing the importance of remittance channels for countries facing humanitarian and economic crises. The letter also called for Biden to roll back travel restrictions because they make it harder for Cuban Americans to visit and reunite with family on the island. The letter said that traveling to Cuba would increase the flow of necessary humanitarian supplies to the island and the amount and distribution of money and goods sent directly into the hands of Cubans.
The Biden administration said it was taking steps to restart consular processing at the embassy after Trump scaled back its staff in 2017 after health incidents that affected employees and their families.
The letter asks that the State Department remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, which creates more barriers for Cuba to receive goods. The lawmakers asked Biden to return to the policy of engagement and normalization, including bilateral groups on migration and other areas of mutual interest.
The letter said that the right to protest in Cuba is better served by principled engagement rather than unilateral isolation, which has proven to be a failed policy.