Drawing the ire of some New Yorkers for their “wasteful” behavior and for indulging in “craziness,” the state Assembly is calling for eased restrictions on Americans’ travel to Cuba, advocating a policy some observers of Cuba say enriches Fidel Castro’s communist regime and exploits ordinary Cubans.

Last week, the Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution calling on the Bush administration to encourage “streamlining licensing procedures for qualified United States persons traveling to Cuba” for “people-to-people” visits. Such visits, members of the Assembly argue, establish meaningful ties between ordinary Americans and Cubans, sowing the seeds for cross-cultural exchanges that will promote democracy on the island.

Some authorities on Cuba said, however, that those trips are abused both by American tourists and by Cuba’s communist strongman, Fidel Castro, who relies on the dollars such travel pumps into his economy.

While an effective travel ban results from the Treasury Department’s prohibition on Americans’ spending money in Cuba as part of the embargo, exceptions are often made for travelers claiming educational, religious, humanitarian, or journalistic reasons for their expenditures. Those categories are malleable, and tour providers saying they promote “people-to-people” or “friendship” visits frequently offer little by way of substantive interaction with Cubans, and much by way of sunshine and sand, a scholar of foreign investment in Cuba, Maria Werlau, said.

As an example, Ms. Werlau – who is also director of the Free Society Project, a group documenting the victims of the Castro regime – pointed to an advertisement for a May Day Friendship Tour run by a Canadian humanitarian organization last year. The ad promises “fun on the beautiful Cuban beaches” and the chance to “experience the exciting and vibrant culture of Havana’s famous nightlife,” plus a trip to the Che Mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba, which is the resting place of Mr. Castro’s murderous associate, Ernesto Guevara.

Similarly, a State Department official familiar with Cuba said Americans on people-to-people visits “are going down for the sexiness of visiting Cuba,” and “to escape reality, not to deal with it.”

Indeed, what is known as “tourist apartheid” keeps foreign visitors far away from the Cuban reality, according to observers of the regime. For example, state restrictions prohibit ordinary Cubans from staying at the resorts to which foreign visitors are directed by the government, which relies heavily on tourism revenues. Moreover, even Cubans who work in the resorts frequented by foreign travelers are discouraged from interacting with visitors. According to a law enacted by the Cuban Ministry of Tourism this year, “tourism workers in their relations with foreigners” are expected to, among other stipulations, “communicate immediately to the proper authorities any illicit activities or actions that could undermine the dignity, security, and principles of our Revolution,” and to “abstain from disseminating, propagating, or expressing opinions that might be detrimental to the nation’s prestige, Cuban institutions, work collectives, or fellow workers.” Because jobs in the tourism sector are among the most sought-after on the island, the State Department official, who asked not to be named, said the incentives to obey those laws are strong.

Ms. Werlau said Mr. Castro was particularly encouraging of “people to-people” visits because they allow him to craft the image of Cuba that visitors take back home, amounting to so much propaganda. Because the totalitarian Cuban government is completely centralized, she said, engaging it – even to arrange the so-called solidarity tours, which require state approval – means engaging it on Mr. Castro’s terms, and those, she said, will always be favorable to the regime.

The State Department official cited as an example that the regime is “systematically exploiting” its control of air travel to the island, demanding “outrageous charges” – $280 for a 40-minute flight, the official said – for charters to the island.

The proceeds from that travel, the official said, actually stymie democratic reform rather than aid it. “It is axiomatic that the regime is going to use these resources to sustain itself and arrange a succession rather than a transition,” he said.

One of the Assembly resolution’s proponents, Joel Miller, Republican of Dutchess County, said he saw the resolution that he and Jose Rivera, Democrat of the Bronx, introduced as a gateway to a complete lifting of the embargo, which was “a political decision based on the politics of Florida as much as anything else.”

Mr. Rivera, too, said he hoped the Assembly’s resolution would help bring about an end to America’s sanctions on Cuba. He said the sanctions harm America’s economic interests because they prevent American companies, particularly agricultural interests, of which New York has many, from reaping the benefits of investment in Cuba. Mr. Rivera said he saw last week’s resolution as part of a series of resolutions passed by state legislatures, particularly those in Southern agricultural states, as part of “a movement building up to pressure the federal government” to normalize relations with Mr. Castro’s regime.

Mr. Rivera, who said he had met Mr. Castro on a trip to the Dominican Republic, offered this assessment of the dictator: “I think I could be wrong, but I have seen no other leader that is so charismatic, that can mobilize over 1 million people.” He was referring to a protest staged by Mr. Castro in advance of a pro-democracy gathering on the island in May.

“Fidel is still very respected and followed by the majority of the people down there,” Mr. Rivera said. As such, America should engage Mr. Castro on equal footing, he said. “I think that we should show him the respect,” the assemblyman said. “He’s a world leader, whether we like it or not.”

Some Cuban-Americans in New York expressed outrage, however, that lawmakers were wasting their time praising Fidel Castro instead of tending to the business of the state.

“This is craziness,” a refugee from Cuba who fled the island in 1993, Juan-Carlos Formell, said in Spanish yesterday.

Mr. Formell, 40, a musician who resides in Queens, said: “They have thousands of problems to resolve in their own communities, and they’re busying themselves with this fantasy?”

A Cuban-American filmmaker living in Manhattan, Ivan Acosta, who left Cuba in 1962 at age 17, said of the Assembly’s resolution: “I think that before lifting any sanctions against Castro, the first move has to be made by the Castro regime, to stop putting people in jail for being dissidents.”

“He should allow … freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of everything, like in any other democratic nation,” Mr. Acosta said.