WASHINGTON — A brief exchange after President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night has sparked interest in what the White House might be considering doing regarding its policies toward Cuba.
The conversation between Biden and U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat and Cuban American who is chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, happened after the president finished his speech and was greeting lawmakers, and it was caught on camera.
“Bob, I gotta talk to you about Cuba,” Biden said smiling. “OK,” Menendez replied. “I’m serious,” Biden added, before moving on to salute other members of Congress gathered around him.
The White House and Menendez’s office did not immediately comment on the exchange. But Biden’s remarks have increased speculation about future policy changes toward the communist country.
The two countries have been very public in their demands. The Cuban government’s priority is the elimination of Cuba from the State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism. President Donald Trump added Cuba to the list in one of his last moves before leaving office in January 2021, citing Cuba’s support for the Colombian guerrilla ELN and its offering of safe harbor to fugitives of American justice, whom the island authorities treat as political refugees.
But Cuba has a new ally in the left-leaning president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, himself a former guerrilla fighter who asked for the island’s removal from the list during his first meeting with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last October.
After lifting some restrictions on remittances and travel in 2021 to fulfill a campaign promise, Biden officials stopped short of reversing most measures imposed by the previous administration, citing the Cuban government’s crackdown on peaceful protesters in July of that year.
Last week, the head of the U.S. embassy in Havana reiterated that point in an interview with the Miami Herald.
“We’ve certainly communicated to the Cuban government that this the most serious obstacle to any improvement in relations,” chargé d’affaires Benjamin Ziff said during a visit to Miami. “We made it clear that the human rights context on the island is a huge obstacle, the hugest obstacle to being able to have any kind of movement in the relationship with the United States.”
Cuba is going through its worse economic crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and administration officials have voiced concerns about the humanitarian situation on the island.
The mass exodus of Cubans in 2022, when more than 300,000 came to the United States, prompted the administration to reengage in migration talks with the Cuban government, reopen consular services at the embassy in Havana and restart a family reunification program. Last month, Biden expanded a special parole program initially aimed at Venezuelans to also allow Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans come and work in the United States legally for two years.
But some Cuban Americans have urged the administration to do more to help the Cuban people and a nascent private sector struggling to grow independently from the state.
A list of measures to help Cuban entrepreneurs that have been discussed and vetted by several government agencies have been under consideration for quite a while by the White House, according to sources with knowledge of the deliberations who were not authorized to talk about them publicly.
Aside from lifting sanctions, there’s a range of policy steps the president could consider, among them allowing Cuban private business owners to have bank accounts in the United States and use U.S. credit cards, said Joe García, a former congressman from Miami who has frequently traveled to the island to engage with the private sector and the Cuban government.
“That is not helping the Cuban government but it is helping Cuba, the nation,” he said. “One thing is the government, and another one is the people. And at this moment, there are independent actors in the Cuban economy; they are small, but if we really want to make changes, it is with these people that we have to engage.”
For García, that Biden wants to discuss Cuba policies with Menendez goes beyond the obvious, given his influential position as the leading voice in Congress regarding foreign policy issues.
“It is good,” García said. “We, Cuban Americans, are part of whatever happens.”
Menendez was one of the most vocal opponents of President Barack Obama’s brief detente with Cuba. As a Cuban American, he has said many times that Cuba is a personal issue for him, one that has already put him at odds with a president from his own party. Some Cuban Americans who oppose lifting sanctions on Cuba believe he will be willing to buck a Democratic administration again.
“We are confident in the integrity of Senator Menéndez regarding his commitment to the freedom of Cuba,” said Marcell Felipe, a Cuban-American lawyer who organized a fundraising event for the senator in Miami in December. “Any conversation about Cuba in the Biden White House requires the leadership of the senator. We know what it cost him to oppose Obama’s policies, and we have no doubt that he would do so again if necessary.”
Several exile organizations under the Asamblea de la Resistencia coalition have warned the Biden administration against removing Cuba from the list of countries that sponsor terrorism and lifting financial sanctions against the government at the time there are about 1,000 political prisoners on the island.
But advocates of the private sector in Cuba insist the president should do more.
“President Biden has consulted with Senator Menendez at every step before moving forward with common-sense changes to Cuba policy, like reopening travel, remittances and consular services,” said Ric Herrero, the executive director of the Cuba Study Group. “At a minimum, we hope this exchange signals that his administration is ready to fulfill its commitment to expanding access to financing and other US-based services for Cuban private entrepreneurs, as it announced in May last year and has yet to act upon.”
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