Cuba ends exit permit requirement.

[mazolaman]

BBC article.

[Ryan]

BBC article.

Many Cubans I have spoken to are happy enough to stay where they are, it's what they know. All of those have been the ones making their way in the system eg. casa owners, people in the tobacco industry. That is, people with ready access to foreign currency and the benefits. A few stay for family ties.

However, the majority I've met would be out of there in a shot.

Simply ending the exit permit requirement with the implication that any Cuban could simply leave if they wish, seems too extreme and sudden to be true.

Of course I could be wrong.

[Nino]

It would be highly welcomed by all Cubans and hopefully, for their sake, it's true.

However, I'll only believe it has changed when I see it ....

Now - will the last Cuban leaving kindly switch off the light at El Morro lighthouse ....

[Canadahamlet]

You have to remember that even if a Cuban has a right to leave, they still have to obtain an entry visa to the country of destination. Because of the predilection of cubans to not return home, it is very difficult for a cuban to get an entry visa unless they can show a past history of travel or have very storng ties to cuba , like a family and babies, that would not make them a risk of staying. A single person with no history of travel will not get an entry visa to Canada, USA, Australia, Europe Mexico.

Yoani Sanchez will be an interesting case, she will get entry visas. Lets watch what they do with her and other courageous dissidents.

[Nino]

You have to remember that even if a Cuban has a right to leave, they still have to obtain an entry visa to the country of destination. Becasue of the predilection of cubans to not return home, it is very difficult for a cuban to get an entry visa unless they can show a past history of travel or have very storng ties, like a family and babies, that would ot make them a risk of staying. A single person with no history of travel will not get an entry visa to Canada, USA, Australia, Europe Mexico.

Yoani Sanchez will be an interesting case, she will get entry visas. Lets watch what they do with her and other courageous dissidents.

x2

[Nino]

And here's an extended article from Cuba Standard, an indenpendent Cuba Business News service.

http://www.cubastand...t-restrictions/

The article :

Cuban government eases exit restrictions

After two years of hinting that change was imminent, the Cuban government announced Oct. 16 that citizens will be allowed to leave the country without having to ask for a permit.

This puts Cuba in tune with emigration procedures of most other countries.

Under much-hated previous regulations, Cuban citizens had to produce a letter of invitation and obtain an “exit permit” from the foreign ministry, at a cost of $150, allowing only for official travel and time-limited family visits abroad; Cubans would lose their residency rights after 11 months abroad.

As of Jan. 14, Cubans traveling abroad will only need a passport and obtain a visa of the host country. Cubans are now allowed to stay abroad for up to 24 months, allowing for — apparently indefinite — additional extensions granted by a Cuban consulate, without losing their citizen rights.

The eased restrictions are part of an “irreversible normalization process of the emigration with its fatherland,” according to an editorial in Communist Party daily Granma. An article in the same newspaper said that more measures easing conditions for the 1.5 million Cubans living abroad will follow.

The increased toleration of emigration, in turn, will likely increase demand for back-and-forth travel by Cubans, thus putting pressure on the U.S. government to do away with the special immigration privileges granted to Cuban citizens who set foot on U.S. soil.

Whether travel will increase depends on the U.S. government, experts say.

“It will be up to the U.S. government, and whether they will issue visas for all those who wish to visit here,” said Bob Guild, vice president of Miami-based Marazul Charters. Marazul is one of the largest Cuba charter companies in the United States.

Even if Washington will keep direct travel by Cubans to the United States under a lid, Cuban travel to Mexico and Canada will increase, some contend.

“The Cuban Adjustment Act and wet foot dry foot policy must be suspended and repealed,” New York-based pro-travel activist John McAuliff wrote in the Havana Note blog. “With Cubans free to travel to Mexico and Canada, ’step across the border’ economic migration will become a bigger problem.”

To be sure, in an effort to prevent brain drain, the Cuban government won’t grant passports to hundreds of thousands of professionals, such as doctors. According to the new regulations, published in the Gaceta Oficial Oct. 16, people “with obligations to the Cuban state or civic duties,” and people with expertise that fall under categories identified under regulations aimed at “preserving the skilled labor force” may not be granted a passport. Likewise, those involved in criminal proceedings, prisoners and soldiers won’t be eligible for a passport. The government will also deny a passport “when reasons of defense and national security recommend so.”

The U.S. government has an ongoing program that helps Cuban doctors defect to the United States.

The passport restrictions, the article in Granma said, fall within “the right of the revolutionary state to defend itself against the meddling and subversive plans of the U.S. government and its allies.” They are aiming at “preserving the human capital created by the Revolution, against the talent theft the powerful are practicing.”

A week earlier, the Cuban national soccer team lost three members when they defected during a World Cup qualifying game in Canada.

[Canadahamlet]

Yoani has been looking at the law and commenting on twitter, her last tweet "The lie can run for a 100 yrs, the truth reaches it in 1 day".Ifi #MigratoryLaw is a scam we will know it on Jan 14, 2013"

[Nino]

Yoani has been looking at the law and commenting on twitter, her last tweet "The lie can run for a 100 yrs, the truth reaches it in 1 day".Ifi #MigratoryLaw is a scam we will know it on Jan 14, 2013"

Thanks for the link to her Twitter account !

Here's Yoani Sanchez' blog and her comments on the reform :

http://www.desdecuba.com/generationy/

Travel and Immigration Reform: Happy or Satisfied

My suitcase has worn out its wheels in five years of rolling around the house, from one corner to the other. The underwear stored in the little thing has lost its elasticity and its color has faded.

The airline tickets I never used are gone, after postponing them over and over they ended up in the trash.

My friends have said goodbye to me so many times and so many times I didn’t go, that the farewell has become routine.

The cat adopted as his own that handbag I never managed to take on a plane, and the dog chewed on the shoes meant for a trip I could not take. Nor did the picture my friend gave me of the “Virgin of Good Travel” resist the test of time and even the shine in her eyes has gone out.

After five years of demanding my right to travel outside the country, today I woke up to the news of travel and immigration reform.

My first impression was to shout “Hurrah!” mid-morning, but as the day advanced I considered the shortcomings of the new law. Finally the objectionable Permit to Leave has been eradicated, as well as the annoying Letter of Invitation that we needed to leave our own country.

However, now in the issuance and validation of passports they will define those who can cross the national frontiers and those who cannot.

Although the costs of the paperwork will be less and I imagine the time required shortened, this is not the new travel and immigration law we were waiting for.

Too limited, too narrow. But at least it has put in writing a legality as a starting point from which we can now demand, protest, denounce.

In my case I am going to believe – until January 14, 2013 – that I am not on any “black list” and that the ideological filters to leave have come to an end.

I will fill out the application for a new passport, and wait with that dose of ingenuousness necessary to survive, to not become apathetic.

I will be there when they open the doors to decide which Cubans can board a plane and which will continue under the “insular imprisonment.”

And my suitcase will be at my side, with worn out underwear, unworn shoes, and a pale picture of Mary who no longer knows if she’s leaving or returning, if there are reasons to be happy or to be satisfied.

[Nino]

For those interested in the topic, here's a more detailed and in-depth view from Havana Times on the issue.

http://www.havanatimes.org/

Haroldo Dilla Alfonso* & Juan Antonio Blanco

HAVANA TIMES — At last, after a year and a half of high-risk pregnancy, Raul Castro’s government has given birth to the “updating” of the nation’s immigration policy.

I have always thought that anything is positive that benefits the Cuban population, eases the immense burdens weighing down on islanders, simplifies their lives and prevents suffering.

Therefore I believe that what has been done is positive. Regulations have been relaxed, irritating fees have been eliminated, and contacts between islanders and Cuban émigrés are going to be facilitated. Many family members and friends will now have less difficulty in reuniting with each other and many immigrants will have to waste less money paying the onerous costs of consular services.

The permitted duration for Cubans temporarily outside the country will be extended to 24 months instead of 11 months, with all the benefits this might bring. For this and many other reasons that the reader will note, what has happened is positive.

On the other hand, if we want to analyze to what extent this signifies an important step in strengthening the status of Cuban citizenship — of émigrés and islanders — then there’s almost nothing to celebrate.

The reason is because the Raul Castro government has only implemented a few changes that improve its political aesthetics, to win support among some sectors of the émigré populations, as well as send a message to the planet that some things are changing.

A Matter of Rights Not Permissions

But beyond these adjectives of relief, the quantitative ones, there have been no fundamental changes. It won’t take long for the excitement created by the headlines announcing the end of an era to give way to the discovery that we are witnessing a renovation of what we’ve experienced before, one that is as superficial as painting buildings on the verge of collapse for the impending visit by a distinguished foreign guest.

Above all, the immigration issue isn’t a matter of permissions, but of rights. There exists extensive international legislation that enshrines the rights to move freely, to emigrate, to return to one’s home country, and also, obviously, not to emigrate.

Despite Cuba being a signatory to all of those covenants, the Cuban government has proceeded to restrict all rights expressed within them. First, it denied them absolutely, and then it proceeded to sell them – always reserving the power to grant and revoke them.

It would have been desirable for the updating to have moved the pre-existing situation in a positive direction, or at least taken some steps forward. But that didn’t happen, and what the updating of the immigration policy offers us is a certain relaxation of permits that the state grants to its subjects, not a reinstatement of rights to its citizens.

Now Cubans won’t be required to present letters of invitation or tarjetas blancas (exit permits), which means a savings of about US $300 and quite a bit of time. However the power of the state to grant permission — and revoke it — remains intact through the processing of passports.

Migration therefore continues to be a mechanism of socio-political enforcement and control of the population, a powerful mechanism for the expropriation of rights in favor of the unappealable power of the post-revolutionary political elite.

The only Cubans who can travel to and from the island are those rewarded for good conduct, which in this case means their learning to shut up and co-exist with what they disapprove.

Although we know that the Cuban state does not permit such sophisticated liberal qualities as transparency, it always lashes out in a confusing manner, like the new legislation establishing the guidelines for exclusion.

It speaks, on the one hand, of punishable sins of those who threaten hard and yet vaporous concepts (“public interest,” “foundations of the Cuban State,” “national security”) without ever defining these concepts or who determines them, while not even saying who is in charge of the thankless task of rejecting unqualified candidates.

On the other hand, people who have important technical functions related to economic/social development will not be able to catch a flight in order to preserve “the skilled workforce of the country,” nor will they be offered any other alternative than forced confinement on the island for five years.

Another issue is the “mutilation issue,” because the Cuban immigration problem isn’t confined to the issue of how free inhabitants of the island can be to travel outside of the island.

There is also the issue of free movement within the island, and here we must remember that the right of Cubans to move freely in the country is curtailed by Decree 217, whereby many Cubans are living in the capital with the same rights and insecurities as undocumented immigrants in any country the world.

This also includes, in a particularly significant manner, the situation of Cubans living in other countries, who constitute most dynamic 15 to 20 percent — economically and demographically — of transnational Cuban society.

At the expense of this sizeable sector, hundreds of thousands of Cuban families eat, dress and cure themselves. They also carry out small-scale private investments that are now the only source of jobs for the island’s impoverished economy. Meanwhile, the state receives substantial resources through fiscal and pricing avenues.

For these people there is no “updating,” except for a pair of tiny concessions relating to the extension of the stays on the island where they were born, whereas right now they’re required to leave within 90 days.

In short, we have obtained something better than the same old thing, though it’s absolutely insufficient. We’re not facing a change in mentality and concepts with respect to immigration.

It’s too bad that it’s like this, because the relationship between the island with what is effectively its community of emigrants — and what the Cuban leaders are determined to see as a problem for managing — is above all an opportunity.

Cubans living outside the island have accumulated substantial financial, technical and intellectual resources that could be much more important for national development than the few fistfuls of dollars that the Cuban political class — in its parasitic yearning to be subsidized — take out of their pockets.

In its emigrants, Cuban society possesses valuable capital for multiplying opportunities when these can be put in contact with the energy and creativity of insular society.

A better future can be built when Cuban society can optimize its undeniable transnational condition.

—–

(*) This article was originally published in Spanish by Cubaencuentro.com .