Obama Urges Eased Restrictions for Cuba Travel

MIAMI — Senator Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate, is leaping into the long-running Cuba debate by calling for the American government to ease restrictions for Cuban-Americans who want to visit the island or send money home.

Mr. Obama's campaign said Monday that, if elected, the Illinois senator would lift restrictions imposed by the Bush administration and allow Cuban-Americans to visit their relatives more frequently, as well as ease limits on the amount of money they can send to their families.

"Senator Obama feels that the Bush administration has made a humanitarian and a strategic blunder," spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail. "His concern is that this has had a profoundly negative impact on the Cuban people, making them more dependent on the Castro regime, thus isolating them from the transformative message carried by Cuban-Americans."

Mr. Obama explained his position in an op-ed piece yesterday in The Miami Herald.

While the American embargo has limited who can travel to the communist island and what can be sent there since the early 1960s, restrictions added by the Bush administration in 2004 made visiting and shipping gifts to Cuba more difficult.

Most Cubans in America can only visit the island once every three years and can only send quarterly remittances of up to $300 per household to immediate family members. Previously, they could visit once a year and send up to $3,000. The American government also tightened restrictions on travel for educational and religious groups.

The Cuban-exile vote is considered key to winning Florida, and top presidential candidates have generally followed the recommendations of the community's most hard-line and vocal leaders, who support a full embargo against Fidel Castro's government.