The new make-up of the House of Representatives and of the Senate offers an opportunity to restore the right of all Americans to travel to Cuba, without the risk of maneuvers in Conference that frustrate majority will.

I am writing as a constituent to ask your support for reform of an anachronistic policy that has put special interest regional politics ahead of American values of personal freedom and our nation’s security and humanitarian goals.

As Cuba goes through an internal leadership transition, our country is completely absent from the process except rhetorically. If we wish to have a positive influence, we should be encouraging mutually respectful engagement at every level by American citizens and civil society, just as the US has with Viet Nam and China, countries whose political and legal systems are not very different from Cuba’s.

Over the past four years our nation’s policy has taken a completely counterproductive course. Cuban Americans have been harshly limited to a single trip every three years to see a narrow range of family members. Virtually all visits have been barred by teachers, administrators, students and alumni organizations; by world affairs organizations, professional associations and people-to-people dialog organizations; by musicians, art and cultural institutions and museums; by religious bodies and humanitarian aid groups; by sports teams and environmental organizations.

Thanks only to Congressional legislation, farmers and agribusiness representatives have been able to go to Cuba to win an annual export market (despite bureaucratic obstacles) of half a billion dollars, but travel agents and other exponents of the American free market system cannot do the same.

I ask you to think seriously about the benefit to average people in both the US and Cuba of legislatively ending all restrictions on travel in 2007. Specifically, I ask that you consider becoming a co-sponsor of H.R. 654, the Rangel/Flake bill to allow for normalized travel to Cuba.