Cuban American group advises Biden to re-engage with Cuba, build support in Miami

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Nora Gámez Torres
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A new policy memo by the Cuba Study Group, an influential Cuban American advocacy organization, advises President Joe Biden to re-engage with Cuba but avoid the shortcomings of a similar approach under Barack Obama’s administration.

“We wanted to understand why it had been so easy for Trump to undo the progress that had been achieved under President Obama’s popular opening to Cuba without incurring any political costs,” Cuba Study Group executive director Ricardo Herrero told the Miami Herald. “In our research, we found that the social-economic ties between the United States and Cuba, while extensive, remain shallow, informal and exceedingly vulnerable to codified sanctions and unpredictable political cycles.”

As the Biden administration is set to review U.S. policy toward Cuba, several pro-engagement organizations have lobbied the current administration to reverse former President Donald Trump’s Cuba policies, heavily focused on sanctions against the Cuban government and its military.

The Cuba Study Group document, obtained by the Herald ahead of its public release on Tuesday, encourages the new administration to abandon the “centerpiece policy of regime change” for an incremental approach aiming to make any changes more durable. As the first steps, the report states that the Biden administration should lift Trump-era restrictions on remittances and travel and take some immigration-related measures that are likely to get broad support, such as reinstating the Cuban Reunification Program and resuming the issuance of a multi-year visa for Cubans wanting to visit the U.S.

The Biden administration has already signaled it is willing to do that.

Will Biden restore ties with Cuba? Debate swirls over next steps as Florida loss muddies plans

Other steps Biden might take in the short term, the memo argues, include increasing support to the Cuban private sector; engaging quickly in high-level bilateral talks about thorny issues like the resolution of property claims, and implementing “confidence-building” measures such as ordering a review of Cuba’s re-designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Lifting sanctions to the military will likely face pushback by influential Cuban American members of Congress from both parties, such as Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), who is set to become the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Florida Republican Marco Rubio, who helped draft the sanctions policy under Trump and was appointed as vice-chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Acknowledging such a reality, in the short term, the Cuba Study Group recommends keeping the sanctions but reviewing if they are delivering on their purpose.

Progress on more challenging issues like Cuba’s long-standing demand to eliminate the embargo depends on congressional action and will require that the Cuban government “advance meaningful economic liberalization and guarantee greater rights for Cubans both at home and abroad,” the document says.

The policy recommendations also included one caveat that others have minimized: “the road to resilient relations” between the countries “runs through, not around, Miami,” an acknowledgment of both the impact of Cuban American voters in Florida elections and their role as key stakeholders in policies towards Cuba. The document also calls for the Biden administration to “highlight Cuba’s democratic failings and support actors across the spectrum of Cuban society who work to ensure that greater economic and civic freedoms are guaranteed on the island.”

Reforms in Cuba and outreach in Miami

The memo is carefully worded to avoid talk of concessions or a quid pro quo approach, strategies likely to be rebuffed by the island’s government. Instead, it encourages both governments to implement “individual but parallel policies” to advance the negotiation process.

The memo acknowledges that the Trump administration was able to dismantle engagement policies with little political repercussions because the Obama administration could not clearly demonstrate progress, as Cuban government hardliners pushed back on the opening.

“Normalization will remain vulnerable to partisan winds unless Cuba follows through on its stated intentions to finally deepen internal reform,” the document states. “Cuban officials must also understand that heavy-handed responses to peaceful internal dissent are not only reprehensible, but also complicate the case for normalization in the United States.”

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The policy recommendations echo the concerns of many Cubans and Cuban Americans who want to see further economic reforms, greater civic freedoms, and policies that allow Cubans Americans to reintegrate fully into the country’s economic and political life. A recent open letter signed by more than 700 intellectuals, writers, independent journalists, civil society members, and political dissidents supporting normalization also asks the Cuban government to eliminate immigration restrictions for Cubans living abroad.

“As Cuban citizens, we want the government to move towards normalizing relations with the rest of the nations, but, first of all, with Cubans themselves wherever they may be,” the letter says.

Carlos Saladrigas, the president of the Cuba Study Group, said in an interview he also believed that “a level of normalization between Cuba and the diaspora” was needed to “end this constant cycle of Cuba policy openings and closings.” He also called for the Biden administration to involve the Cuban American community in the policymaking process.

A common criticism of the brief thaw pursued under Obama was that his administration did not consistently reach out to the Cuban American community to explain a policy that many perceived as having been cooked in Washington DC by government officials without much knowledge about Cuba. Cuban American Congress members were left in the dark about the policy changes and the secret negotiations that led to the restoration of relations in 2015.

A 2020 poll by Florida International University found that most Cuban Americans supported measures that promoted engagement with the island, such as travel and remittances, but also stricter sanctions against the Cuban government, as resentment about a stalled economic reform and increased government repression continued growing among the Cuba diaspora.

With his harsh rhetoric on Cuba and Venezuela and his misleading claims about socialism coming to America, Trump won the support of a majority of Cuban American voters, including those who recently arrived from the island and were largely expected to lean Democrat. To avoid a similar result in future election cycles, the Cuba Study Group suggests the Biden administration “work proactively in South Florida to build deeper buy-in to the idea that a policy of engagement is good both for the future of Cuba and South Florida’s Cuban community.”

Herrero, the organizations’ executive director, said the goal should be to transform the Cuban American community into the greatest facilitator for a deepening of relations between the United States and Cuba.

“We’re not asking to develop a Cuba policy that’s totally dependent on the whims of a few voters in the community,” Saladrigas added. “We’re just saying [to the Biden administration], ‘listen to the community, get feedback, and exercise leadership so that you can help transform the public opinion in the community back into a pro-engagement point of view.”

Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres

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