Issues:

Today, the most immediate issue people must contend with is the simple right for people from the U.S. and Cuba to interrelate on any level due to U.S. government intervention.

U.S. residents have had their fundamental human right of freedom to travel, their constitutional right of freedom of association, and ability to personally experience their world and another culture censored by their own government.

U.S. residents are the only people in the industrialized world prohibited by their government from traveling freely to Cuba. In fact, Cuba is a preferred family vacation spot for much of the Western hemisphere. Over a quarter million of our Canadian neighbors travel to Cuba yearly.

By necessity our immediate task is fundamental and self-serving: restoring our own human right to live freely in the larger world, and because we have a unique constitution which makes us ‘free’ men and women, and not mere ‘possessions of the state’ we cannot allow ourselves to be disenfranchised from public policy concerns. This has become a major constitutional and civil rights issue for U.S. residents.

For the past hundred or so years, U.S. Government determination to unduly influence Cuba’s national development have distorted the opportunity of authentic relationship between the people of the U. S. and the people of Cuba to improve with reciprocated respect, equity and shared fellowship.

U.S. policy must transcend playing ‘politics’ with Cuba, and Cuba must be allowed to simply be itself -- just Cuba: a sovereign nation with its own distinct and unique history, culture and development, like any other nation in the world. Cuba must be freed of U.S. interventionist policies. The U.S. must respect Cuban independence, and seek to resolve conflicts with Cuba through normal international diplomatic channels.

In today’s global realities, Cuba poses no legitimate threat to U.S. security. It is inconsistent and counterproductive to exclude U.S. and Cuban citizens from the mutual benefits inherent in traditional people-to-people sister city programs on any basis of historical feuds, ideological differences, imperial addictions, annexation fixations, partisan politics, or political bias.

Issue Background:

Without congressional consultation, or majority public support (which favors the normalization of relations with Cuba) President Bush has openly stated U.S.-Cuba policy objectives are to facilitate a rapid ‘regime change’ in Cuba and has allocated resources and adopted a 500 page strategic report to overtly and covertly implement that objective.

As of June 30, 2004, almost all travel between the U.S. and Cuba will be restricted due to new U.S. regulations. U.S. residents now have their own constitutional rights suspended, and fundamental human rights violated. Under these new restrictions, even Americans with family still in Cuba are denied humanitarian access to their families, and cannot even send them clothes! Academic programs are being censored or closed, and all people-to-people programs have been totally eliminated.

No U.S. policy could be further from reflecting the fundamental human values this nation professes to be founded upon: democratic freedom of expression, association, family values, and humanitarian concern. Land of the Free? Not any more.

USCSCA sees its membership, in partnership with our Cuban counterparts, playing a profound role in that transition to becoming respectful neighbors.