License
While it is not illegal under U.S. law to travel to Cuba, it is illegal to spend U. S. dollars for such travel. That is considered “trading with the enemy” [sic.] However, there are several exceptions -- categories of people who can be licensed to spend dollars going to Cuba. These licenses are issued through the U.S. Treasury Department by its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the agency in charge of enforcing the embargo against Cuba. Licenses are available for journalists, humanitarian workers, religious organizations, educational institutions, and students and professional researchers. Just who is eligible and how easy it is to get a license varies from year to year depending on the political winds in Washington. You can find the current OFAC guidelines here. If you were to phone OFAC for license information, they would probably tell you that you cannot go to Cuba. That’s not because that is true but because their job is to discourage people from going. You’ll find much more helpful the web site of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which has a Right to Travel page . For a summary of current travel restrictions as they affect professional and educational travel, click here.
As the rules now stand, most any academic who wants to go to Cuba for professional research can do so under a general license. That means you don’t need a document from OFAC but only need to affirm that you qualify under a General License. But you do need to have a full program of research activities while in Cuba with the likelihood of non-commercial publication of the results.
Graduate students need a Specific License, i.e. an OFAC document authorizing you to spend money to go to Cuba. Graduate students need to show how the trip is relevant to their graduate study andspecifically related to Cuba as well as a letter from the university saying thatthe research will be accepted toward a graduate degree. While these documents should beaddressed to Office of Foreign Assets Control, Department of the Treasury, theyshould be signed and mailed to
Cliff DuRand
Cuba Conference
1443 Gorsuch Ave.
Baltimore MD 21218
or FAXed to 410-235-5325.
We will then submit to Treasury all the student requests together along with an overall program of activities. Do this by March 1 since Treasury can be slow in processing license requests when they want to be. But first, students might want to check to see if your university has an institutional license. If so, they might authorize you to travel under it. That’s the simplest way to do it.
In past years when we have applied for a license for our whole delegation we have usually had little difficulty getting our license. However, in 1998 we had to do battle with OFAC to win a license for our delegation. If you want to see a report on the campaign we launched, click here (link not up yet). Then two years later, OFAC unexpectedly gave us a two-year institutional license that allowed us to take just about anyone we wanted during 2000 and 2001. In 2002 we were given a people-to-people license that was even less restrictive, although it was good for only a limited period of time. Now that type of license has been discontinued as part of the Bush administration’s tightening up on travel to Cuba. At the same time Congress is trying to relax the embargo. So we will have to wait to see what the future holds in store.
American public opinion is strongly opposed to the whole embargo. It is seen as a violation of OUR freedom to travel and a relic of the Cold War, supported mainly by the very vocal Cuban Americanright wing in Miami. That is why an estimated 100,000 U.S. citizens travel toCuba each year without licenses. They go for the sun and sand, for the music, tomeet the friendly Cuban people, to discover its socialism, to see this forbiddenisland. But they do so at risk of severe penalties – a fine of $55,000, although most are able to negotiate a far smaller amount. Currently, enforcement has been increased significantly. OFAC has 21 employees enforcing the embargo on Cuba, but only 4 tracking Osama ben Laden’s money.
As the rules now stand, most any academic who wants to go to Cuba for professional research can do so under a general license. That means you don’t need a document from OFAC but only need to affirm that you qualify under a General License. But you do need to have a full program of research activities while in Cuba with the likelihood of non-commercial publication of the results.
Graduate students need a Specific License, i.e. an OFAC document authorizing you to spend money to go to Cuba. Graduate students need to show how the trip is relevant to their graduate study andspecifically related to Cuba as well as a letter from the university saying thatthe research will be accepted toward a graduate degree. While these documents should beaddressed to Office of Foreign Assets Control, Department of the Treasury, theyshould be signed and mailed to
Cliff DuRand
Cuba Conference
1443 Gorsuch Ave.
Baltimore MD 21218
or FAXed to 410-235-5325.
We will then submit to Treasury all the student requests together along with an overall program of activities. Do this by March 1 since Treasury can be slow in processing license requests when they want to be. But first, students might want to check to see if your university has an institutional license. If so, they might authorize you to travel under it. That’s the simplest way to do it.
In past years when we have applied for a license for our whole delegation we have usually had little difficulty getting our license. However, in 1998 we had to do battle with OFAC to win a license for our delegation. If you want to see a report on the campaign we launched, click here (link not up yet). Then two years later, OFAC unexpectedly gave us a two-year institutional license that allowed us to take just about anyone we wanted during 2000 and 2001. In 2002 we were given a people-to-people license that was even less restrictive, although it was good for only a limited period of time. Now that type of license has been discontinued as part of the Bush administration’s tightening up on travel to Cuba. At the same time Congress is trying to relax the embargo. So we will have to wait to see what the future holds in store.
American public opinion is strongly opposed to the whole embargo. It is seen as a violation of OUR freedom to travel and a relic of the Cold War, supported mainly by the very vocal Cuban Americanright wing in Miami. That is why an estimated 100,000 U.S. citizens travel toCuba each year without licenses. They go for the sun and sand, for the music, tomeet the friendly Cuban people, to discover its socialism, to see this forbiddenisland. But they do so at risk of severe penalties – a fine of $55,000, although most are able to negotiate a far smaller amount. Currently, enforcement has been increased significantly. OFAC has 21 employees enforcing the embargo on Cuba, but only 4 tracking Osama ben Laden’s money.
